McLaren P1 LM breaks Goodwood hillclimb record

Bucket list, must do, before you die and so on…

We all know about Goodwood, and we all know just how much automotive insanity is packed into the grounds of a large English estate every July. We also know about Lord March’s awesome 1.86km long driveway.

Every year, a frankly astonishing array of machinery lines up at the bottom for a spirited, or sideways, or crash-riddled run up alongside adoring crowds, and this year’s slightly damp weather didn’t dull proceedings.

Amongst a crop of cars that included the Aston Martin Vulcan and the new Bugatti Chiron was the McLaren P1 LM, a road-going version of the sold-out P1 GTR that costs in the order of five and a half million dollars to buy. Yes.

Lanzante Motorsport – the LM in P1 LM – are the same crew behind the original McLaren F1 road car, and will make exactly six of these 735kW monsters. The big Macca is more ferocious than even the P1 GTR, and is 60kg lighter to boot. Eeek.

Former Champ Car racer Kenny Brack, a long-time visitor to this hallowed hill, was tapped as the LM’s driver for the weekend. Brack is a certified nutter, as proven by this video of him wrestling a Ford GT40 in the wet at the Goodwood Revival.

The Swede’s run up the narrow road was simply heroic, stopping the clocks at an astounding 47.07 seconds, three seconds faster than the next best supercar, and resetting the road car record in the process.

He was ultimately pipped by just 0.7sec for the overall by 2015 winner Ollie Clark in a 580kW, slick-shod, time attack Subaru Impreza.

Both have some way to get over the top of the fastest time ever set up the hill, though; Nick Heidfeld ran a 41.6sec time in a 1998 McLaren MP4/13 Formula One car in 1999…