McLaren P15 track weapon teased ahead of December reveal

THE next stage of the British sports car maker’s wild, almost bonkers Ultimate Series roll-out will be revealed next month, the company has confirmed.

The all-new sports car – dubbed the P15 until it receives its official name – won’t be a vehicle for the milk run, with McLaren saying straight up the car will sacrifice daily usability to give its owner “the most intensive driver experience around a circuit”, ranking as “the ultimate track-concentrated McLaren”. What that means is anyone’s guess.

But we won’t have to guess after 11am on December 10, when the P15 is revealed in full ahead of its first official appearance wrapped in its carbonfibre skin at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show in March next year. Teaser images reveal some serious aerodynamics feeding air around the P15’s body, while a Honda Civic Type R-look triple pentagonal exhaust system housed in a titanium-look pentagonal flashing hint at the performance of the as-yet unknown powertrain.

It won’t end there, though, with McLaren revealing the new hyper-GT will be another Ultimate Series model codenamed the BP23 – a vehicle the British sports car maker claims will become the world’s first “hyper-GT”.

Just like the P1 revealed in 2013 that also spawned a more hardcore, track-honed GTS version, McLaren says the P15 and its hyper-GT will sell in strictly limited numbers – only 375 of the P1-badged twin-turbo 3.8-litre plug-in hybrid supercars were made.

While the P1 (above) was up against the likes of the LaFerrari and the Porsche 918 Spyder, the P15 is expected to lure potential buyers waiting for the arrival of the Aston Martin Valkyrie and the Mercedes-AMG’s $3.7 million Project One – the latter of which taps into Mercedes’ Formula One technology to create a hybrid 1.6-litre V6 drivetrain tuned to give 558kW, and with peak revs hitting the limiter at a stratospheric 11,000rpm.

However, the P15 is expected to use a more extreme form of the 3.8-litre V8 developed initially for the P1 – whether it also incorporates the F1-derived MGU-K kinetic energy recovery system, and the MGU-H that’s used to spin up the engine’s turbochargers at low revs to improve step-off performance.

Unlike the F1 engine, though, the P15’s power unit won’t wear a Honda badge.