Interesting thoughts from an owner getting rides around the Top Gear test track.
Hi everyone..
while Andy, Mikey and the rest are still likely on their way to dinner or at McLaren GT, I'll just post a few words, the others I am sure will post pics, possibly a video...
Quick rundown... I went to the MTC first where I met a bunch of very nice people from McLaren, as always.. but also met Andy for the first time.
We did the MTC Tour, great as always and talked a lot about all the cars and other aspects of McLaren... The P1 production line is looking good. There were 7 P1s finished waiting for delivery and 3 more or so right before finishing.
Production is being still ramped up.
As we have heard from multiple other sources, all 375 cars are sold. There actually are waiting lists in multiple regions in case people drop out. But the last 6 weeks have really been great for McLaren and a lot of people that were on the fence, have gone for it finally.
I did try to tease them into telling us a 'Ring time, but even there, they would not budge. They simply said, all their goals that they set out for when they envisioned the car, they met. Which I guess is most important, so we know it is sub-7 around the Ring, but how much exactly, who cares in the end.
I think we can be sure (and if needed, I will help) that the car will be tested around various tracks to see how it performs to other similar cars...
Which brings us to the most important part, the Dunsfold track test. We left MTC towards Dunsfold and arrived shortly after. XP7 and PP3 were both waiting for us right there and Chris Goodwin welcomed us.
After a brief introduction for the day, Andy and Mikey went out for a drive first together with two test drivers of McLaren Automotive that both know the P1 very well.
Everyone's turn was similar: Do a few laps on the Top Gear Track in various driving modes, N, S, T. Switch to E-Mode in the middle of driving to just feel the difference of just the electric propelling the car still quite nicely. Then back to the start, for a switch into Race Mode, in which we just did runs up and down the runway, to not get tempted to track the car in full speed around the circuit with so little testing before and to truly feel the power this monster has.
When it was my turn, I took the car for a relatively calm spin to really feel and look closely to certain aspects of the systems it has. And as I mentioned before, I was not really feeling comfortable pushing either of these two cars to my limits...
On the runway, in race mode, this was obviously slightly different. Full throttle is staggering in this car and it does not stop. I did not feel any true slowdown or any kind of turbo lag anywhere from 0 to 275kph which is at fast as we got it on the runway stretch, in seconds... And the brakes, consistantly the same braking cold or after a few turns, no difference, no blocking, very very comfortable but strong brakes and the car stays flat, does not move an inch roll wise. It is amazing.
After us all taking them for a spin, we did passenger rides of 2 laps around the top gear track each, to see how these cars really can perform. And god do they perform. Nothing I have ever experienced got close to this speed and precision you felt in these cars.
I did a few laps in full race cars in the past months with racing drivers and albeit the feeling is similar, the P1 blew them all away.
I can guarantee, I do not regret ordering this monster and trusting McLaren that they will deliver on their promises, and for me they have.
Although this one is very interesting, regarding the batteries.
Two VERY important things regarding the Hybrid drive that I have learned this trip:
The P1 can regen in all kinds of situations, even in full throttle scenarios. I will not go into details, since I tried explaining things here many times and most people ignore it anyway or do not understand it fully. I had a good long chat with one of the main hybrid tech guys (Andy was present) and what he explained made perfect sense. (And made even more sense after talking a little with Chris about it too.)
Trust me and accept when I tell you, it all makes sense. The Hybrid regen system they have developed is staggeringly good. It regens battery power all the time, it does so very quickly. It uses up to the full 130kw of the e-motor to do so depending on scenario, it also sometimes uses very little... Whatever it can do, it will regen without losing ANY power required on the wheels.
When you watch the battery charge meter jump up and down constantly when tracking the car or just driving it, you realize how good it is at it! Also, important to realize, we drove the cars constantly for a good hour or more, fast, slow, lighting, everything you can think of. And the power never ran out in any shape or form!
One comment that I think shows this even better was that Chris said, in the last years driving all of the P1 XPs and PPs, not a single time did they HAVE to actively charge one. Not a single team did the batter deplete or the car lose some of its power.
Also, regarding the whole "what about the second lap of nordschleife" questions everyone keeps asking... McLaren's goal for the Hybrid system's regen capability is based on the Ring. Their goal is, that when doing one lap of the Ring, the car has to have enough battery power to do the final very long straight from start to finish without running out of batter power for it. Once it passes that straight, then next turns and not full throttle parts are enough to recharge it again so that once it gets back to the long straight, it again has enough power. The car will run out of fuel before battery power, and when it gets empty, put it into E-Mode, drive to the petrol station and fill it up....
Love this machine...
To at least go into a little bit more tech detail on the hybrid...
The way the hybrid system runs, especially in race mode, is that it will try to always find a way to charge the battery. It is hard to show easy to understand examples, but there will be times the ICE can not speed up the car any faster than it currently is doing, it can not increase RPM quicker simply due to lag of something or another... if the ECU catches those times well, it can, even if its just for 2 seconds, overpower the ICE, take the extra torque out by power-inverting the e-motor to make it a generator instead, and not lose power to the wheels but power the e-motor...
I mean, look, adding X amount of kinetic energy into a 1400kg system requires considerably more energy than adding the Y amount of energy into a tiny electric motor connected DIRECTLY to the ICE with one single clutch. I am not sure if I am explaining this well.
If you drive the car, you CONSTANTLY see the recharge icon flicking on and off. You can also watch the charge bar diminish and fill up constantly. You do not feel ANY change in the car's performance while it does that. It just RUNS. Well.. screams..
When we were changing the car into Race Mode, it was charging the battery in those 30 seconds. And to just speed it up a bit, we pressed the CHARGE button in the car, and you could watch the bar fill up. Race Mode was set, pressed Charge again and took off.
Amazing piece of machinery.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"
