McLaren P1 GT by Lanzante: In depth at Goodwood

At the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year, Lanzante Motorsport showed off its only (for now) McLaren P1 GT.

Inspired by the original F1 GT Longtail, the P1 GT is a customer car which belongs to a largely anonymous collector who goes by the Instagram handle speedy_gonzales999.

Lanzante’s head honcho Dean Lanzante spoke with the Goodwood crew at the event, pointing out it was there to ‘be shown off’ rather than to set performance benchmarks.

As for diving into the car itself, he starts off by breaking down the design of the modern day Longtail.

Lanzante says it was a challenge to take elements from the original Longtail and apply them to a far more modern car with different lines and body elements.

“The difficult thing is trying to use styling cues of a car that’s over 20 years old, and not just for the sake of using them, but actually using them for a purpose,” he says.

5

“From the louvers of the wheel arches to the roof scoop, using them for an actual aerodynamic purpose, along with the splitter, as well as having it have a common theme with the original F1 GT – it has to work, it can’t just be about the looks. But it has to look good too.”

Dean Lanzante also confirmed that more P1 GTs will be built, with the first chassis having paved the way for a faster process when the next cars are build.

“They’ll be on a shorter time frame because a lot of it is tooling… but the future ones should be more like four or five months.”

5

He also says this particular version is fitted with a few creature comforts, such as sound deadening and a stereo, though it’s got the same suspension geometry and shares the vast majority of its technical features with the P1 LM it’s based on.

But, if you feel like you don’t need to hear Dean explain how and why the P1 GT came about, there’s always this short clip of it just cruising the driveway.