THE MOST EXTREME ROAD CAR MCLAREN HAS EVER BUILT!
Named after the legendary Formula 1 driver, Ayrton Senna the McLaren Senna is the ultimate McLaren road-legal rack car ..
The McLaren Senna has been designed, engineered and developed with single-minded purpose: to be the ultimate McLaren track-concentrated car for the road. Legalised for road use, but not sanitised to suit it, the new Ultimate Series deliberately compromises McLaren’s trademark breadth of supercar daily usability to deliver the most intense circuit experience of any road McLaren.
True to the legendary abilities of one of McLaren’s greatest racers, every element of the McLaren Senna has an uncompromising performance ethos and a raw focus that delivers the purest connection between driver and car; this is the most responsive and engaging road-going McLaren ever. To this end, the appearance of the car is deliberately aggressive; organic shapes have given way to a design language that is purposely fragmented in its pursuit of absolute performance, with downforce and aerodynamic balance the guiding principles. The McLaren Senna is the strongest expression yet of McLaren’s ‘form follows function’ philosophy.
Always at the forefront of vehicle aerodynamics, McLaren redefined supercar performance in the 1990s with the McLaren F1, the world’s first ground-effect road car. The bar was raised once again with the first Ultimate Series, the McLaren P1™. Now with the McLaren Senna, ground-breaking active front and rear aerodynamics and RaceActive Chassis Control II (RCC II) combine to raise downforce to unprecedented levels while ensuring that the extreme performance can be fully exploited through precise control of the aero balance.
The carbon structure at the core of the McLaren Senna, Monocage III, is the perfect complement to the aerodynamics and powertrain. This strongest monocoque that McLaren has ever built for a road legal vehicle, Monocage III combines with an all-carbon body and uncompromising lightweight engineering throughout to make the McLaren Senna the lightest McLaren since the iconic F1.
The lightest dry weight of 1,198kg and the 800PS power output give the McLaren Senna a power-to-weight ratio of 668PS-per-tonne (659bhp). This statistic immediately underlines the performance credentials of the newcomer to the McLaren Ultimate Series, a product family introduced with the McLaren P1™ and reserved for the rarest and most extreme McLaren cars.
There are strong echoes in the new McLaren Senna of the incredibly focused philosophy behind the McLaren P1™; yet where the latter was designed to be the best driver’s car on road and track, the ambition for the McLaren Senna is for it to be the best road-legal track car, setting a new benchmark for circuit excellence with track prowess taking precedence.
An innovative new hydraulic suspension system, RaceActive Chassis Control II, works in harmony with the active aerodynamics and sacrifices daily usability for circuit pre-eminence. Selecting Race mode brings the uncompromising nature of the McLaren Senna to the fore, the hydraulic suspension increasing roll stiffness and reducing ride height to lower the centre of gravity and further improve aerodynamic performance.
The driver is ‘hardwired’ into the experience at all times. The ultimate connection to the McLaren Senna is made through the steering wheel, the seat and the pedals, because to truly enjoy the sensation of driving at ferocious speed you need a machine that actively communicates its every intent, putting you in complete control.
This is a McLaren that embodies Ayrton Senna’s values. The passion in everything he did is reflected in the efforts of every McLaren designer and engineer in creating the vehicle that carries his name. The commitment to go back to the drawing board once component weight targets were met and pursue a further five per cent reduction mirrors Ayrton Senna’s single-minded focus and the abandonment of trademark McLaren usability in the quest to build the ultimate track car, his refusal to compromise. Most importantly, the innate feel and intuitive connection to his race cars for which Ayrton Senna was renowned will be experienced by those who drive the McLaren Senna.
Just 500 examples of the McLaren Senna will be produced and all are already assigned. Each vehicle will be hand-assembled by specialists at the McLaren Production Centre in Woking, Surrey, England, in a process taking close to 300 hours.
