8:20
Cars have changed. Everything is smoother now, aerodynamically efficient, kind of blobs. Whatever happened to the super inspiring, crazy supercar designs that we used to hang up on the bedroom wall on a poster as a kid? Well, we still have those. So I did a video a couple years ago on hybrids, and I'm not a prophet or anything, but like, the end point of that video was talking about how. electrification is here. Hybrid supercars are here. The holy trinity from back in 2015 was just the beginning. Now it's 2026, and we've got this, the W1, the successor to the F1 and the P1. And those are some big shoes to fill.
All of the groundbreaking driving, performance, and technology and experience that comes with every "1" car is here. And I get to be one of the first people outside McLaren to drive it. Today's going to be a fun day! A lot of people say the greatest supercar of all time is the McLaren F1, still the fastest naturally aspirated car ever made. 240 miles an hour. Then its successor is my favorite car of all time, the McLaren P1, member of the holy trinity of the first three hybrid supercars.
I was lucky enough to get to drive one. Unreal car. The type of car where most owners that have 20 or 30 other cars still say that's their favorite one to drive. Now, the W1 is next up. From the powertrain. to the aerodynamics to the track performance, it is closer than ever to a literal Formula One car with a license plate on it. And I cannot wait to experience it. All right, time to drive. I just got to get into this thing, which I think is right under. This is going to be crazy.
So a hypercar like this is built around being the most track-capable machine possible. But on the street, it still has to be a car. Still a really fast car, obviously. Now you might be wondering how it compares to the Rimac Nevera that I got to make a video with. That was the world's fastest production car on. all-electric, all-wheel drive, instant torque and, well, the Rimac is still faster in a straight line. That still beats everything. But. that's not the whole story. It may seem like McLaren is chasing everyone else by doing the trendy thing because this is yet another. brand new thousand-plus horsepower hybrid.
But this is still a McLaren, and they still do a lot of things that others simply don't these days. The extreme lightweight, the rear-wheel drive, hydraulic steering, 3D-printed aerodynamic double-wishbone suspension. Like it's such a lightweight purist driver's machine. On the outside. this car is a masterpiece, not just because it looks really good, but because it's an aerodynamic masterpiece. From the very, very front of this car all the way to the back. It's designed. basically entirely to move air as efficiently and quickly from the front to the back as possible. So there's this active element right at the very front here.
This front splitter actually moves up and down. It opens up for DRS and closes when you don't need that. And the air starts by moving over the hood really quickly. The air that goes in that front piece here comes out the radiator and goes over that hood piece and keeps it glued to the top of the car. You move air down the side, it gets sucked down in here. And the air then channels along the side of the car through this massive inlet.
I mean, the door is basically a bunch of holes. And this top piece right here kind of looks like a roof scoop, because the P1 had a roof scoop up there. But it's not. It's actually just a piece to keep the air continually moving over the top of the car. And then you get to the back. with this active rear wing, which does a lot of moving, as we now know. And this huge rear diffuser, which completes the ground force effects. The air leaves the back of the car here twice as fast as it entered the front. And then you got that exhaust, and it's not bad-looking. So then this. is the key to the McLaren W1. So the thing about these McLaren interiors is they've been improving
them a lot over the years. And I think the biggest knock on McLaren in the past decade has probably been both reliability and build quality. This is easily their best-looking and most interesting interior of all time. It's crazy! First of all, these seats. are built into the carbon fiber structure of the car. And then I love this. This knit material is so interesting. It looks really cool. Kind of like those concept cars I've seen at CES. So I'll pull this handle down. And then this is what it's like. in the driver's seat.
So there's a floating display over here, which, believe it or not, has. wired Apple CarPlay. Not that you're going to be doing a whole bunch with the tech in this car. But then there's a display in the back here. And this whole binnacle is basically just like the way it is in some other modern McLarens, like the Artura. You have your suspension controls on the left, which can go up or down, and then your powertrain controls on the right, which can also go up or down. And then this whole thing. moves with the steering wheel. So if you move the whole thing up. or down, looks pretty good. And then this material is everywhere. So there's Bowers & Wilkins speakers through the whole cabin.
But like this speaker, for example, here has the material over it, but it should be acoustically transparent. I think it looks really good, these carbon fiber. aero ducts for your air conditioning. All of that looks fantastic. There's a little hole in the seat here. There's also a fire extinguisher. And then a nice spot for the key here, which is where I'm going to put it. But you can also move that back. to expose another cup holder. So two cup holders, count them, in this car for the very practical. Or maybe not. If you pull this. little button right here, it gives you access to this back space behind the driver and the passenger, which is good enough for maybe one and a half duffel bags.
I'll call that a duffel bag and a backpack. And then, of course, since there's no other rear visibility here, you have a camera to have that rear visibility. So if you turn it off, that mirror sees nothing, but you turn it on, and that camera is very useful, even though the whole bottom corner, quarter of it, is taken up by the rear wing. That's cool. I like seeing the rear wing. It moves a lot when you drive. But, yeah, this is a nice place to sit. Look, this, this handle right here, you're holding carbon fiber, but that's also where you open the door. That. That's really nice. And then you have the speaker.
And you've got these little LEDs in here, which I think you can see, which at night, I'm sure is much more dramatic. And then you're essentially sitting in a carbon fiber tub. But here's one more crazy element. Since the seats are fixed in this car, there's a little latch right here, which you can pull this. to move. these pedals towards you or away from you, which is how you adjust your seating position. You don't move the seat. You move the pedals away from you and the steering wheel into place where you want it. Nice big carbon fiber paddle shifters, a little bit of glass on the roof, and the world's thinnest sun visors.
I think I'm comfortable saying that these are like. barely compliant, thin carbon fiber sun visors, but, hey, they get the job done. Then in the roof, you start the engine. Comfort mode to start. The first things you notice, obviously, are. being lower to the ground. It's pretty awesome, actually. It rides really well. So these are not the best or worst roads in the world. These are actually pretty tight. Italian mountain roads that they have us out here testing the car on.
I'm noticing the car absorbs potholes really well in comfort mode. Not the loudest thing in the world. And. the accelerator pedal is not too twitchy. Visibility is also, I think, actually pretty great. So the windshield's big. It's got this huge window next to me, and it's a split window, which means when I put this down, only the bottom half opens. I can pay the tolls and wave to people. And then behind me, well, there's nothing actually open behind me, but I am relying on this rearview camera, which the bottom fourth of it is basically entirely blocked by the rear wing, which is hilarious.
It's not the worst visibility in the world. It's like B+ visibility for what this car is. The car is definitely wide, and this is a pretty tight road. So I'm feeling that every time I turn. But the other thing I feel every time I turn. is the hydraulic steering. I don't even have to be going that fast. to feel that. McLaren. continues to do, in my opinion, the best steering. in any supercar with their hydraulic steering. If you open up this car and explode it into a thousand little pieces, and look at the suspension parts, the double wishbone suspension, that is three, 3D printed. So right now it is. It's soft.
Comfort mode is actually comfortable. The battery in comfort mode is just doing the torque fill to give you a responsive gas pedal at these lower RPMs that you cruise around at, and it's incredibly effective. It is actually a pretty tiny battery. It's just 1.4 kilowatt-hours, but it's a radial flux e-motor straight from Formula E. So it is. super power-dense, and you can even go up to one to two miles on electric-only before the engine actually has to turn on. I don't want to bore anyone with too many technical details here, but I do think that these numbers will help you appreciate how ridiculous this car. actually is. On the left, here is my benchmark for a really,
really fast car. That's the newest Porsche 911 Turbo S. And this is the W1. So, on the left, the 630 horsepower is from the engine alone in the Porsche, but it's a hybrid, as you may know. So that adds 80 horsepower from the electrical system, totaling about. 700 peak horsepower. Very powerful. The W1, on the other hand, has a brand new, in-house, twin-turbo, flat-plane crank, 4-liter V8 that makes over. 900 horsepower. by itself. And then a ridiculously powerful and highly developed electrical system that adds 342 more horsepower. So the totals are crazy. And the torque numbers are also crazy. But that's not the craziest thing. is this car is also
a featherweight. So these are the weights of the cars down here. 1,700 kg, which is a normal car weight for a hybrid, 1,399, that's the dry weight that McLaren has quoted for us. But let's add fuels and call it 1,450 kg or something. That's still. under 3,200 pounds, which is insane. So the power-to-weight ratio of these cars, I mean, they're in completely different leagues. All of that to say that the 0-to-186-mile-an-hour time for this very fast German Autobahn missile. is about. 22 seconds.
It's really fast. The W1 will do that in 12.7. But now, you know, these cars, I've talked about it before, they have multiple personalities. This binnacle right above the steering wheel, just like the Artura and the other new McLarens, changes my powertrain and changes my suspension. So I'm going to go to sport for both. So now everything stiffens up a bit. So little bit louder, it's a little more aggressive with the gear shifts and more responsive from the accelerator pedal. So the sounds of this car really start to come alive more in sport mode. As you heat this thing up, you can hear,
I think the most prominent sound besides the engine is the, the flutter. The, the blow-off sound. I've driven McLaren 750S. You can watch some other McLaren review videos on the Auto Focus channel. But you do get these. long pulls that are not as short as like 750S. And you get these long pulls with a ton of torque with the. fill from the hybrid system all the way from the bottom to the top of second gear. There's eight gears to this gearbox. No reverse gear, by the way, that's just with the electric motors.
Man, this is such an interesting car. It is. On one hand, it represents a lot of what's happening in the rest of the hypercar world with what a lot of people actually don't really like that much, to be frank. Like of course, a ton of horsepower, 1,200 horsepower, crazy numbers, ridiculously capable, but also a bit less. communicative, a bit less emotion. than some older cars. But at the same time, they're also doing a lot of what people really like, especially what McLaren's done well in the past keeping the lightweight philosophy. This is a 3,000-pound car. That's crazy.
Crazy. Power-to-weight ratio amazing. Hydraulic steering. Still very communicative in lots of ways. But yeah, it's both things at once. And you know, you'll never be able to fully tell what this car is capable of on the streets like this. Which. means We should find that out by taking it to a track. Let's go to the track for the track experience. McLaren has reserved Mugello Circuit for the day, and this track. has everything. Fifteen turns, twisting S-curves, 50 ft of elevation changes, and a long 1 km straightaway through the start. finish line.
The Tuscan Grand Prix was actually hosted here in 2020, so it is literally an F1-grade track, perfectly smooth, which is a great opportunity to finally put the W1 in race mode, which drops the suspension and fully extends the rear wing back by almost a foot. It moves so far back that it essentially becomes an extension of the rear diffuser, which, fun fact, is actually no longer street-legal because it extends past the rear bumper of the car. That will not be a concern here, though. This was a chance to finally, actually open up full throttle, 1,200 horsepower, and see what this car is capable of. It's the dream experience, if you ask me.
Use the aero, use the grip through this high-speed chicane. Allow the car to drift out. Tons of grip! and. Wow, a lot of power! Try not to make the curve so big there, make the line straighter. That booster button on the right. put your finger on it. Boost? So you really feel it kick in, don't you?
So how was that? Wow, what a car! Yeah, it is! Fun fact: I got to do a few more laps than this, but the footage is actually unusable because the G-forces from the car literally pulled the glass inside the lens to move me out of focus, which is insane. The car. stayed absolutely locked to the ground thanks to aerodynamics and those Trofeo RS tires. I could only really get it to feel a little bit loose on the biggest braking zone on the whole track fully stomping on those carbon-ceramic brakes from 190 miles an hour. The back end wiggled a little bit into turn one. That's about it. By the way, that speed at the end of that straight, over 190 miles an hour. Fun fact, that's the same speed Lewis Hamilton hit on his way to a victory here during the
Tuscan Grand Prix in that Formula One car. That is absolutely insane. And this. is a car. that can go on the street. It's clearly nuts. Seriously, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. All right, conclusion time. I wrote down a bunch of my notes actually on my phone during the course of the day. Spent about 3 hours total in this car all day today between the track and. street. My highlights for this car are. one, aesthetics because I mean, come on, anhedral doors.
I think this interior looks amazing. I think the materials are really nice and the build quality on top of that. This is also a. prototype car, technically not finished, but I want to give it credit for that. And two, the drive, the character, the way it can split between. like a road-trip-able car with actually a little bit of storage in it to a track monster and aero monster, a power monster. is. sick. It's what you should expect for how much you'd pay for this car. We'll get to that. It is still a hybrid, which means all the concerns that come with a hybrid, obviously this car did not throw zero faults at me today.
It also had some weird door latch stuff. But again, it is a prototype, so I'll give it the pass for now. But there are concerns for long-term stuff. But I think McLaren in general. has gotten way better with build quality. and the things we've thought about with McLaren in the past. So. I'm optimistic. The car that this reminds me the most of is the McLaren P1, which I was lucky enough to drive. It sounds a lot like the P1. It's ridiculously powerful and almost lag-free like the P1. Like a lot of these other cars, especially McLarens, are very powerful and very light. and they're not laggy. But the turbos take some time. and this
deletes that lag and you can feel it. While you hear the engine spool up, you feel yourself accelerate from the electric motor. It's awesome. There's 399 being built. Two million plus dollars. We're probably never going to see it on the road just like P1. So the best chance you and I have of seeing this car is in videos like this. So I hope I was able to do it justice in the three hours I spent behind the wheel were pretty sick. I think I have a new. poster car for the bedroom now.
Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one Peace.
