McLaren Senna: 789 BHP road legal car revealed

McLaren has revealed the Senna which is the next addition to the company’s Ultimate Series range of supercars. Honouring the F1 driver Ayrton Senna, the track-focused, road legal race car will be limited to just 500 units.

The McLaren P1 replacement features use of carbon fibre in the chassis and body panels. It gets an air dam at the front flanked by two air intakes on each side. The LED headlamps get a DRL strip below them. The roof features an intake scoop at the centre. The Senna gets scissor doors which have glass on the door panels. The car gets intakes at the sides to cool the mid mounted engine. The rear gets an adjustable spoiler and a double diffuser. Thin red LED strips act as the tail lamps. The exhaust pipes are bunched at the centre of the rear.

According to McLaren, the car's cabin has been designed to allow helmet-wearing drivers to enter and exit easily. The door mechanisms and window switches are located near the start / stop button, above the driver's head. The 3-spoke steering wheel has no buttons on it. Two displays are used to relay all the information to the driver. One of them is the driver information display while the other is the screen of the infotainment unit. The Senna gets only two seats and limited storage behind them - enough for a couple of helmets and race suits.

The McLaren Senna is powered by a mid-mounted 4.0-litre, twin turbo V8 engine that makes 789 BHP and 800 Nm of torque. The engine gets dry sump lubrication, flat plane crankshaft and electronically controlled waste gates to improve the throttle response. Air is fed to the engine via the roof mounted scoop. Power is sent only to the rear wheels via a 7-speed dual clutch gearbox. The automatic mode is default, though the driver can engage the manual mode by using the steering mounted paddle shifts. A choice of three driver modes is available - Comfort, Sport or Track. A Race mode option is also available, and the switch is located on the roof panel.

The car gets a double wishbone suspension with adaptive dampers interconnected hydraulically to each other. The car gets centre lock light weight alloy wheels shod with Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tyres. The car has a kerb weight of 1,198kg.

The car will be unveiled at the 88th Geneva International Motor Show in March 2018. It will be priced from GBP 750,000 and hand made at the McLaren factory at Surrey, England from Q3 2018.