McLaren P15, the successor to the P1, will arrive with 800 CV and plenty of surprises

Everything new and unveiled in the recent McLaren 720S will be available for the P1’s successor, a 800 CV supercar that the British luxury car maker wants to launch to replace the legendary P1 in its range. Although the launch date has not yet been confirmed, the project is on track and could see the light of day much sooner than expected. Some even suggest the car could be shown even before the end of 2017.

For McLaren, a second instalment of its Ultimate Series would be good news, especially in light of the valley of tears it is going through recently. The necessary and compulsory electrification of its various ranges that the brand must tackle in the coming years, together with the disastrous results the Formula 1 team has been recording (which has a negative impact on the company’s overall finances), seemed set to delay the start of the P1 successor project for some time. But now, the British magazine Autocar has revealed that the new P15 could be ready this very year.

To have this model available in such a short time, to the point of bringing forward its debut, McLaren would have drawn up — always according to Autocar — a work plan based on four key concepts, namely: Designing the car based on the P1 concept, as if the P15 were a reinterpretation of the original, and drawing on the key elements used during the development of the new McLaren 720 S. Likewise, the brand’s engineers would have given up on hybridising the model, which would spare them from having to use a new structure as a starting point and allow them to focus more on improving aspects such as aerodynamics and the weight-to-power ratio to make it even faster than its predecessor. To this end, its design is being particularly overseen by Rob Melville, who was appointed Design Director at McLaren last May.

Apparently this seems to simplify things, but not really that much. Because, first of all, it will have a new monocoque chassis made entirely of carbon fibre in a single piece, the Monocage II already used by other McLaren models, and a new evolution of the 3.8 V8 twin-turbo engine that McLaren regularly uses in other models and which, on the new P15, everything suggests could deliver 800 CV of power, without resorting at any point to electrifying its powertrain. It will not have the 916 CV that the P1 produces, but combined with a seven-speed automatic gearbox and thanks to a much lighter and optimised construction, which would bring the P15 to a weight of approximately 1,399 kilos, the brand’s engineers consider that a better power-to-weight ratio can be achieved for the whole (about 250 kilos less than the P1), which would likewise allow excellent performance, at the same level or even higher than that of the P1.

Although still unconfirmed, within the brand there is speculation about the possibility that McLaren might develop, just as it did with the P1, a standard road version and another GTR-type version, specifically designed to compete on circuits. Likewise, the number of units to be produced of the model has not been confirmed either, although everything seems to point to there possibly being 500, some of which have reportedly already been reserved for prominent, wealthy clients of the brand, who would have to pay around one million euros to park one of those units in their private garage.

Note: As there are no images of the new P15 model, the photos illustrating the article belong to the McLaren P1 in any of its versions.