2017 Mclaren 570 on 2040-cars

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2015 Malaysian F1 GP springs hot, humid surprises [spoilers]

In the two weeks since Australia both Mercedes and Ferrari spoke of the improved performance from their respective cars. In Malaysia, Ferrari showed it. Lewis Hamilton still put his Mercedes-AMG Petronas on pole position, but Sebastian Vettel got within two whiskers of the Brit, lining up second just 0.074 behind. Afterward, Vettel said Ferrari could win the race if everything went well. But in qualifying we didn't know how much of Ferrari's performance was truly down to the car and how much was down to the wet weather that struck near the beginning of Q2. The rain didn't hamper Nico Rosberg's run – the German said "I just didn't drive good enough" – and he took third spot in the second Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Showing what the Infiniti Red Bull Racing chassis can do when the power unit is working properly, teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat grabbed fourth and fifth. Whippersnapper Max Verstappen, in his second race, qualified in sixth with an excellent drive through the rain; just 0.030 behind Kvyat, he said he could have got fifth if he hadn't had a running problem with his brakes. Williams head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley said he wouldn't complain about Mercedes' advantage, but Felipe Massa has spent the whole season so far banging the alarm about Ferrari's pace. He says Williams has lost its straight-line advantage, part of the reason the first Grove car is back in seventh, while Valtteri Bottas is in eighth. Between them was Romain Grosjean in the Lotus, but he got dropped two positions for a pit-lane infraction in Q2, so he'll be tenth. Ahead of him is Marcus Ericsson in the Sauber, who would lead the charge to turn in another surprise for the Swiss team. But the real surprise came from the Scuderia Ferrari, who, on a bright, sunny day proved that they don't need to add water for race-winning pace. While Hamilton got made usual awesome start at the lights, Vettel channeled that other famous German Ferrari driver and immediately cut across the track to intimidate Rosberg, maintaining his second place position into the first turn. Arguably the race-winning move came three laps later at that same turn, when Ericsson plunged in too fast and swapped ends, beaching the rear of his Sauber in the gravel trap. The safety car came out when the recovery truck emerged to retrieve the Sauber, and nearly all of the front-runners took to the pits to swap out of the medium tires. Vettel, however, didn't.

MSP Sports Capital buys minority stake in McLaren Racing

LONDON — U.S.-based investment group MSP Sports Capital is taking a significant minority stake in McLaren Racing in a deal the Formula One team said would give them the tools to return to the top of the sport. The long-term investment, announced on Sunday, is for an initial 15% holding rising to a maximum 33% by the end of 2022. McLaren said it values the British racing outfit at 560 million pounds ($740.5 million). Under the deal, MSP will put 185 million pounds into the former world champions, who last won a race in 2012 but are still historically the sport's second-most successful team, over a two-year period. Luxury sportscar maker McLaren Automotive remains wholly owned by the McLaren Group, whose majority shareholder is Bahrain's Mumtalakat holding company, and is not part of the transaction. The consortium members include The Najafi Companies, a private investment firm, and UBS O'Connor, a hedge fund subsidiary of Swiss investment banking firm UBS. MSP is headquartered in New York and the principals have a background as owners and investors in Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) among other ventures. Jahm Najafi will become a vice-chairman of McLaren Racing, while Jeff Moorad of MSP and Rodrigo Trelles Zabala of UBS O'Connor will join the McLaren Racing board. McLaren Racing chief executive Zak Brown said the investment marked the start of "the next chapter" and would allow the team to "turbocharge" their efforts. Paul Walsh, executive chairman of the McLaren Group, told a video conference that the new cash flow would not impact the debt level of McLaren directly. "We have got a number of activities in place where we will look to refinance some of our debt next year and attendant with that there could very well be some kind of equity raise," he said. "What this (deal) does is mean that McLaren Group is not funding on a cash basis in Racing." MSP's arrival increases North American interest in a sport whose commercial rights are held by U.S.-based Liberty Media. Moorad, a former NASCAR team owner, said MSP had looked into acquiring Force India when that team, now Racing Point and owned by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, went into administration in 2018. They also considered former champions Williams, whose sale to U.S.-based Dorilton Capital was announced in August.

McLaren 600LT Spider to show its drop top next week

McLaren is adding yet another Longtail variant to its expanding stable of supercars, as teased in the video above. The company doesn't explicitly say it, but it's clearly the McLaren 600LT Spider. The upturned exhaust is the first clue that it's based on the 600LT, and as the camera pans around, we see the car's shadow has a gap where the roof is missing. Since this new McLaren is a derivative of the 600LT coupe, we assume it will make the same 592 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque. Those ponies ought to sound much sweeter without a roof in the way. The 600LT Spider will probably weigh about 200 pounds less than the regular 570S Spider, similar to the weight difference between the coupes. And if the 570S Spider is anything to go by, there shouldn't be much, if any, difference in performance between fixed- and removable-roof 600LT models. McLaren will reveal the car on January 16, so we won't have to wait long for all the delectable details. When it launches, it will be the fifth McLaren model to have the Longtail's LT designation. It won't be the first convertible, though, since McLaren made a 675LT Spider a few years ago. Related Video: