McLaren is back to its world championship winning ways in Formula 1, and the knowledge gained in competition is helping the brand beat Ferrari (and more) in the supercar contest.
Heather Fitch is program manager for the W1, the British brand’s latest hypercar, and revealed to Torquecafe that a deep pool of ex-F1 engineers helped bring this brand-new road-legal engineering masterpiece to life.
The W1 features a specially-developed carbon fibre central tub and a new 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine and a hybrid powertrain, which makes an astonishing 938kW of power and 1340Nm of torque. It is pitched as a direct rival to the Ferrari F80, Mercedes-AMG One and Aston Martin Valhalla, brands that battle McLaren on the F1 circuit at the same time.
That spirit of competition is deeply ingrained into McLaren Automotive’s workforce, which boast a plethora of world championship winning talent, according to Fitch.
“I think that is a demonstration of the mindset and thinking of the engineers and the team that we have working on this car,” Fitch said, “We have a lot of ex-Formula 1 engineers, they’ve won 16 world titles. We did the count up [and it was] 16 world titles across driver’s and constructor’s categories.
“And they just have the coolest ideas and some great stories from their days in Formula 1. But because we have these guys and girls working on our McLarens, it means we’re always creating something exciting and something cool.”
Because of this, Fitch is confident that McLaren has the knowledge and creativity to eventually create a successor for the W1 that will exceed it, as it has done to the P1 and the F1 before that.
“Yes, it could take some time before we see that next ‘1’ car,” she said. “At the very least behind the scenes McLaren are always innovating. We are innovators. We’ve got an exceptional team and there’s some of the brightest minds in the business, in my opinion. And therefore whenever we create into the future, we’ll be exceptional.”
However, Fitch did make it clear that any replacement is still several years away.
“We will create something exceptional in the future. But, we’ll have to wait and see.”
Perhaps knowledged McLaren engineers are gaining during this championship-winning season could help shape the next-generation of hypercars and supercars for the famous brand.
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