Introducing Senna: McLaren's $1 Million Ultimate Road-Legal Track Car

Ayrton Senna was a unique racer. The legendary Formula One winning driver had exceptional powers of concentration. His was an absolute focus on being the best racing driver on the track and on the planet. It is his spirit that lies behind McLaren Automotive’s latest car, a car named after Senna.

The secret debut takes place in a film studio in one of London’s less glamorous neighborhoods. I know little of the car we’re about to see other than it will be a limited-edition McLaren in the pinnacle Ultimate Series - and that it will join the P1 hypercar. Almost everything McLaren delivers is awe-inspiring, so I am also aware that I am about to witness something a little bit special.

This is the second car in the Ultimate Series family with only 500 of this four-liter twin-turbo V8, with 800 ps and 800 Nm of torque, planned for production next year. The cars will be priced from around $1 million and all, we are told, have already been sold.

In case you’re wondering if and why McLaren should feel the need to make another niche model for the Ultimate Series, the Senna occupies its very own corner. Whereas the P1 (and the $1.5 million P2 that will replace it soon) are designed to be the ultimate driver’s car on the road and track, the Senna is the ultimate McLaren track car that is road legal. It may seem like a very small tweak of purpose, but this is a manufacturer with a portfolio of hand built extreme sports cars – each fulfilling their very own niche. This car is about finding the purest connection between driver and car. It is a machine that is legal for daily usability without being sanitized.

Andy Palmer, the Ultimate Series vehicle line director, explains that this is the most powerful track car McLaren has ever built which performs equally well on the road. “The P1 was a road car designed for the track, which can sit three people and luggage. This car is entirely imagined for the driver. It sits two with enough room for a couple of helmets and perhaps a sandwich. This is the most engaging car we have made so far,” he says, adding. “Senna is the most responsive McLaren ever built.”

Visually, it is an exceptional example of vehicle design. The car before us in the stark white studio, is in race mode so it sits low, the wheels almost hidden by the flap of metal. Few cars conjure up such primary emotions. Palmer calls it brutal, but I beg to differ. The Senna is meant to be provocative - an unforgiving machine that is organically shaped to convey sheer performance. Yet it isn’t brutal. Even though every element here explores the ultimate in aerodynamic efficiency, there remains intense beauty in the teardrop shape, almost a softness in the vehicle’s form, in every perfected surface and intellectual angle and opening; in the play of materiality.

McLaren's Senna stays true to the brand DNA: aerodynamic efficiency, nimble weight and extreme performance. The car explores the company’s engineering expertise. It challenges the limits of materiality, ultra-light carbon fiber chassis and body panels, mid-mounted twin turbocharged V8. It is about working towards achieving a sophisticated race-derived suspension to deliver an amazing blend of control and dynamic balance, an electro-hydraulic steering for accurate inputs, as well as the purest feedback you can expect from a road legal track car.

McLaren’s home grown Monocage III chassis forms its core. This advanced architecture is a step up from the underpinning structure of the 720S. It is the firm’s strongest monocoque for a road-legal car. All body panels have been made of carbon to reduce the car’s weight down to just 1,198kg, meaning the Senna is the lightest road-legal car built by the company since the iconic McLaren F1.

Much of the design is concerned with cooling the V8 powerhouse. For instance, the rear clamshell was born from the twin demands of aerodynamic and cooling performance with prominent gurney flaps ahead of a succession of stepped louvres directing air away from the rear deck and down the sides of the body. So, the area of low pressure draws hot air out from the high-temperature radiators and engine bay, with the louvres ensuring that the airflow does not impact the efficiency of the rear wing. Then the "slash cut" finishers of the titanium exhaust exit through the lowest rear deck of any McLaren road car - the angel of the pipes directing exhaust gas away from the rear wing. This element is a stand-alone art form.

Inside is entirely driver-focused. All main controls have been kept to the very minimum to reduce clutter and the three-spoke steering wheel has been kept free of buttons and switches to encourage a sensory driver/car/road feedback. The seats can be tailored according to your size and shape and are deeply mounted for an intense driving position. The doors are a combination of carbon and glass – the glass panels allow the driver and passenger to see the road as they move to feel even more connected to the car, tarmac and the sheer experience of driving.

McLaren Senna forms the third model to be born from the company’s ambitious Track22 business plan. It will be made at the company’s facility in England and will make its public debut at the Geneva Motor Show next year.

“Every element has an uncompromised performance focus, hones to ensure the purest possible connection between driver and machine and deliver the ultimate track driving experience in the way that only McLaren can,” company CEO Mike Flewitt tells us.

McLarens are born out of a proper collaboration between engineering and design. The teams work intimately at the incredible Woking production center in England. With Senna you can really sense this. There are no superfluous, no silliness here. Every little element in and on the car, from the sculptural exhaust to the dramatic double rear diffuser, has functional value. This is vehicle design at its best. And I cannot wait to see its drama on the road.

As we walk around the car, the words of Ayrton Senna come alive: “You commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have; everything, absolutely everything.”