Meet McLaren's £3,000,000 Ultra-Limited P1 LM

24th June 2016

Bob Murray

Look at the McLaren P1 LM – the new £3m road version launched at FoS – and one question springs to mind: where does the numberplate go?

“There is a bracket for it at the front but the car is not quite as aesthetically pleasing with the plate in place,” Dean Lanzante, the man behind the project, tells GRR.

“We left it off for Goodwood because we are trying to eke out everything we can for its runs up the hill. It does have a rear numberplate…”

Although modified from the track-only P1 GTR to be road legal, the ultimate Ultimate Series McLaren, with 1000hp, is running at FoS among competition cars in Group 5, with Kenny Brack behind the wheel.

“We are running it there because we want to see where the car stands among competition cars,” says Dean. “I want to know how it fares against an F1 car, a Group C Jaguar or Sebastian Loeb’s Pike’s Peak car. If we were a second off the Pike’s Peak car (44sec and among the fastest cars ever up the hill – ed) it would be an amazing achievement – that a member of the public could buy a car that fast and drive it on the road.”

The car at Goodwood is one of six P1 GTRs that Lanzante has commissioned McLaren Special Operations to build for them to road spec – read more about it here. Dean adds: “We basically just copied what McLaren did with the six F1 LMs they built after the Le Mans win in the 1990s.” One thing is different though: Lanzante is not allowing any racing stickers on the car, as happened with the F1 LM.

Another difference is that the P1 will never be able to emulate its older brother’s Le Mans record. Without a racing heritage will the car – which comes with a £2.95m plus taxes price tag – ever appreciate in value as much?

“Hypercars like the P1 can never run at Le Mans as they used to. They can never have a racing heritage – but they can prove their performance credentials in other ways, at Goodwood for instance and also at the Nurburgring where we plan to go with the car next. All P1s have doubled in value already and we are confident we have priced the LM version correctly.”