2018 Mclaren 720s Performance on 2040-cars

Auto blog

McLaren Senna GTR Review | Driving the track-ready, race-banned hypercar

Reviewed by J.R. Hildebrand for TechCrunch. Hildebrand is a professional racing and test driver, nine-time Indianapolis 500 competitor and adjunct lecturer for The Revs Program at Stanford University.   SNETTERTON, England — The McLaren Senna GTR shouldn't exist. This feat of engineering and design isn't allowed on public roads. It's built for the track, but prohibited from competing in motorsports. And yet, the GTR is no outlier at McLaren . It's part of their Ultimate Series, a portfolio of extreme and distinct hypercars that now serve as the foundation of the company's identity and an integral part of its business model. The P1, introduced in 2012, was McLaren Automotive's opening act on the hypercar stage and was an instant success for both the brand and its business. McLaren followed it up with the P1 GTR, then went on to chart a course toward the Ultimate Series of today and beyond. Since 2017, the automaker has added the Senna, Speedtail, Senna GTR and now the open-cockpit Elva to the Ultimate Series portfolio. While the GTR is certainly the most extreme and limited in how and where it can be used, it follows a larger pattern of the Ultimate Series as being provocatively designed with obsessive intent. Automotive takes the wheel Purpose-built race cars that call on every modern tool of engineering and design have historically been produced for one purpose: winning. This objective, nourished by billions of dollars of investment from the motorsports industry, has led to technological and performance breakthroughs that have eventually trickled down to automotive. The pipeline that has produced a century of motorsports-driven innovation is narrowing as racing regulations become more restrictive. Now, a new dynamic is taking shape. Automotive is taking the technological lead.   Take the McLaren Senna road car, the predecessor to the GTR. McLaren had to constrain the design of the Senna to make it road legal. But the automaker loaded it with active aerodynamics and chassis control systems that racing engineers could only dream about. McLaren wasn't finished. It pushed the bounds further and produced a strictly track-focused and unconstrained race car that expands upon the Senna's lack of conformity. The Senna GTR might be too advanced and too fast for any racing championship, but McLaren said to hell with it and made the vehicle anyway. The bet paid off.

Watch Evo pick its 2015 Car of the Year in this epic video

With just a few days left in 2015, it's the perfect time to check out Evo's annual Car of the Year test to determine the greatest performance vehicle of the last 12 months. The writers' picks for the 11 finalists spanned a breadth of engaging models and included: Peugeot 208 GTi by Peugeot Sport, Lamborghini Aventador SV, Seat Leon Cupra Sub8, McLaren 675LT, Porsche 991 GT3 RS, Porsche Cayman GT4, Honda Civic Type R, Ferrari 488 GTB, Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, Lotus Evora 400, and Mercedes-AMG GT S. For the venue to test the mettle of these performance machines, Evo stuck close to home this year and visited the twisting roads at the beautiful north coast of Scotland. Racing brothers Marino and Dario Franchitti also came along for the ride to provide two more voices in the competitive challenge to determine a winner. Evo's video explains why each model deserves to be among such rarified company but doesn't gloss over their faults either. There can be only one winner, though. We don't want to spoil it, so check out the clip for magnificent views of these performance machines through the Scottish countryside.

Britain orders 10,000 ventilators from F1/McLaren/Mercedes/Ford/Rolls-Royce/Airbus

Paramedics and ambulance personnel get instructions from a command unit outside London's ExCel Centre arena, which is being turned into a 4,000 bed temporary hospital called NHS Nightingale to deal with coronavirus patients. The hospital is due to open Monday, March 30. / AP     LONDON — Britain has ordered 10,000 ventilators from a consortium of leading aerospace, engineering and Formula One racing companies which will start production this week in response to an urgent government call for industry to help save lives. The 27-strong team, including Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford and Rolls-Royce, have joined forces to ramp up production of a ventilator made by Smiths Group, which supports those with complications from COVID-19. The consortium, which also includes seven Formula One teams including McLaren and Mercedes, home to World Champion Lewis Hamilton, said they had pulled staff off existing projects to meet the national need. Some 1,228 people have died from coronavirus in the United Kingdom and a senior health official said on Saturday the country would be doing well if it manages to keep the death toll below 20,000. "This consortium brings together some of the most innovative companies in the world," Dick Elsy, the head of the consortium, said in a statement. "I am confident this consortium has the skills and tools to make a difference and save lives." The United Kingdom, which initially only had 5,000 ventilators available in its National Health Service, has been trying to secure additional supplies after realising it needed 30,000 to cope with the peak of the outbreak. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now in isolation in Downing Street after testing positive for coronavirus, made an emergency appeal earlier this month for manufacturers to retool their production lines and start making specialist health equipment including ventilators. Britain now has about 8,000 ventilators, with another 8,000 on order from international manufacturers that are due in coming weeks. Last week it placed an order for a newly-designed model from the vacuum cleaner company Dyson that will need to be approved by the health regulator. Mercedes part of a separate effort, too Separately on Monday a second consortium including Mercedes Formula One and other F1 teams said it had developed in less than a week a new version of a breathing aid that can help coronavirus patients.