What's the news?
More facts have been revealed about the ferocious McLaren Senna hypercar ahead of its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March - and it's clear that it is going to be a very, very fast machine indeed.
We already know that its 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 delivers huge outputs of 800hp at 7,250rpm and 800Nm from 5,500- to 6,700rpm, enough to make it the most powerful combustion engine ever installed into a McLaren road car, but now we have the performance data too.
That engine, powering just 1,198kg of car, can propel the Senna from 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds, from 0-200km/h in a startling 6.8 seconds - that's as fast as some hot hatches, like the Ford Fiesta ST, can run 0-100km/h - while it will do a standing quarter-mile (402 metres) in 9.9 seconds. Any car which can dip below ten seconds for that last benchmark is extremely fast, we can tell you.
More than that, the McLaren's top speed is 340km/h and we now also know it generates 800kg of downforce. That should mean this Ultimate Series vehicle will be incredible when it is put up against the stopwatch on a race circuit - which is, ultimately, where this car is supposed to be used. The Senna might be road legal, but it is ostensibly a track toy for very rich people.
Just 500 examples of the Senna will be hand-built in a 300-hour process at McLaren's production facility in the south of the UK. Of that run, 499 have been assigned to buyers, at a cost of around €850,000 each, but the final, 500th car was auctioned off at a private event in December 2017, with the winning bid of €2.26 million being donated in its entirety to the Ayrton Senna Institute - a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing education for nearly two million unprivileged children and youngsters in Brazil.
Other details are emerging, like the fact that the V8 engine delivers 700Nm from just 3,000rpm, or that the Inconel and titanium exhaust uses valves to become 10dB louder for every 2,000rpm on the rev counter. Or that there are five 'By McLaren' colour schemes confirmed - choose from Stealth Cosmos black, Trophy Kyanos blue, Trophy Mira orange, Vision Pure white and Vision Victory grey for the exterior paint, with certain details outside and in presented in a contrasting colour. Alternatively, 18 paint hues can be specified at no extra cost, while a further 16 shades are part of the MSO Defined palette offered by McLaren Special Operations. Still not enough choice? Then MSO Bespoke can provide a near-limitless number of options for the exterior paint.
Anything else?
"The design language of the McLaren Senna is extremely aggressive and different from any previous McLaren - because no other road-legal McLaren has had to fulfil such an uncompromising brief," said Rob Melville, McLaren Automotive's design director. "When you see the car for the first time, you know instantly how single-minded and focused it is; to meet the performance targets we have had to go to an entirely different level from even the McLaren P1."