We didn’t think the drifting was the most methodological of test procedures as, to us; it’s more about screeching tires and smiles per hour than rigorous analytics. That, however, according to McLaren’s chief test driver Chris Goodwin, isn’t the case. As Goodwin flogs the upcoming second generation Super Series around one of McLaren’s test tracks in full camouflage, he states, “Drifting isn’t just about show-boating and having fun. It actually teaches us quite a lot about the car and drives us in a direction that serves every driver on an everyday driving situation on the road.” Color us surprised.
From the teaser you can see Goodwin push the upcoming McLaren supercar to its limits, sliding like a professional drifter. What’s interesting is how Goodwin describes why drifting is important.
“We have a mid-engine car with a super-stiff carbon fiber chassis. The lightweight development of our MonoCage II, allows the suspension to accurately do its thing, and the control, and the development of the tires are all key in being able to drive the car to and over the limit, creating those nice perfect sustained drifts and not going under and over the limit too much.”
Drifting, it seems, is super important when it comes to supercar development, at least to McLaren. Into the braking zones, we’re also seeing for the first time the 650S replacement’s active rear wing. Like the last generation 650S and 675LT, the new Super Series will have an active rear wing that works in conjunction with the car’s brakes and aerodynamics to improve performance.
The upcoming second generation Super Series is set to debut next month at the Geneva Motor Show, and will feature a brand new 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 that develops around 700 horsepower. The new Super Series also uses a new carbon fiber chassis called the MonoCage II and is loosely based off the hybrid hypercar P1’s chassis.
The new car will hit 124 mph in just 7.8 seconds and blitz the quarter mile in just 10.3 seconds. As we’ve stated before, that’s just barely slower than McLaren’s hybrid hypercar, the P1, which passes the quarter mile lights in 9.8 seconds. Not much beyond these few performance statistics is known about the car, but given that Geneva is just around the corner, we won’t have to wait long before all its details are revealed.
The post Next Generation Super Series McLaren Gets Sideways in Video appeared first on Automobile Magazine.