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This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Andrew Evans (@Famine) on October 24th, 2017 in the Cars category.
The Entry-Level Supercar: McLaren 570S Review
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
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- Shropshire
- IfAndOr
Better than the SsangYong then? 
“No I don’t want to go to Telford!” Made me smile. I worked there for 25 years and that's what I said most days. Mind you if I'd have had a 570S the commute would have been a lot more interesting.
Carbon ceramic brakes - I presume that's for heat dispersal reasons?
Nice car. Nice article.
“No I don’t want to go to Telford!” Made me smile. I worked there for 25 years and that's what I said most days. Mind you if I'd have had a 570S the commute would have been a lot more interesting.
Carbon ceramic brakes - I presume that's for heat dispersal reasons?
Nice car. Nice article.
- 758
- Alabama
- Horobi-Scorpion
This is my favorite car right now. I am reading the article now. Thank you for this!
Chikane_GTR
Premium
- 8,141
- Heaven
Great review and great score for a great car
Last edited:
- 86,802
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
There's actually a fun story behind this car too.
As you can imagine, McLaren is a small company (although with a £2bn value, it's the largest privately owned car manufacturer in the UK), making around 3,200 cars a year. They're high value cars - journalists tend to beat on press cars, and when they're done the cars go to auction with a billion miles on them (this week I'm testing a Jeep that already has 11,000 on it, and 11,000 hard miles) - this isn't something a brand like McLaren can easily justify. As a result, the press fleet is a little small.
McLaren thus decided to start doing a tour event. Instead of sending out its five-or-so cars to journos up and down the country, it would instead invite writers to two-day events. That way it could get 150 test drives in a couple of weeks, with not that much expense.
I attended such an event last year, at Goodwood. I drove a McLaren about the local roads, and chased down a camo Rolls-Royce - with Sue Baker, formerly of Top Gear, as it happens. That wasn't this car, it was a 650S:
Anyway, in the little refreshment area set up for the attendees, McLaren had a driving rig. The rig had a Playseat and a Logitech G920, and was running Forza Motorsport 6 (which I'd never played, obviously). You could do three lap sessions of Silverstone National in a McLaren P1. There was a short leaderboard, colour-coded for each of the regions.
So I had a little go, found that all of the driving assists were on and turned up to eleventy (it even braked for you...), and got about fifth or sixth on my first go. After my drive out in the 650S, I noticed there wasn't much of a queue for it, so I had another go. I didn't really have anything better to do, and no-one else was waiting, so I cranked a few sessions together - McLaren had a PR person attending to the rig, and she kept restarting it for me. Eventually I tied the time at the top, down to the thousandth of a second. Soon after, I beat it:
Not comfortably, because there's only so much you can do with the car braking for you. It was literally a case of finding where to place it so it didn't activate the traction control.
Anyway, when I beat the time, McLaren's PR said "I didn't know whether you were trying to beat it for pride, or because you really wanted to win the prize."; "What prize?"
It turned out that McLaren was offering prizes. The first was a model P1, for the top time at each event. The second, more significantly, was a 570S for a weekend.
Sadly I wasn't able to take the car when I was expecting to, as my well-publicised minor health issue put a hold on things, but I did finally pick it up a few weeks ago. I went down to the McLaren Technical Centre to collect it, and had a tour of the facility, including the production centre where McLaren hand-builds its cars (from a carbon-fibre tub that's currently made in Austria, but which McLaren will make itself in a new facility near Sheffield from 2019). Photos are limited somewhat - no cameras allowed in the production centre, and because the F1 team's facility is within the MTC, I had to take care not to include anything sensitive in any photographs I did take:
I picked up the 570S from there and drove it home for this review.
By strange coincidence, today I have just been at the second round of McLaren's tour - this time the North event, as I no longer work down in the South. Once again, there was a driving rig set up. This time it had a Logitech G29 and Project CARS 2 - running a 720S around Donington Park. Again, too many driver aids for my liking.
There is one more event in the Tour to go - two days in the Midlands - but the leaderboard currently looks like this:
And yes, I only had four goes at it this time (and look closely at some of the names on there)
This year's prize is a 720S for the weekend. Fingers crossed
As you can imagine, McLaren is a small company (although with a £2bn value, it's the largest privately owned car manufacturer in the UK), making around 3,200 cars a year. They're high value cars - journalists tend to beat on press cars, and when they're done the cars go to auction with a billion miles on them (this week I'm testing a Jeep that already has 11,000 on it, and 11,000 hard miles) - this isn't something a brand like McLaren can easily justify. As a result, the press fleet is a little small.
McLaren thus decided to start doing a tour event. Instead of sending out its five-or-so cars to journos up and down the country, it would instead invite writers to two-day events. That way it could get 150 test drives in a couple of weeks, with not that much expense.
I attended such an event last year, at Goodwood. I drove a McLaren about the local roads, and chased down a camo Rolls-Royce - with Sue Baker, formerly of Top Gear, as it happens. That wasn't this car, it was a 650S:
Anyway, in the little refreshment area set up for the attendees, McLaren had a driving rig. The rig had a Playseat and a Logitech G920, and was running Forza Motorsport 6 (which I'd never played, obviously). You could do three lap sessions of Silverstone National in a McLaren P1. There was a short leaderboard, colour-coded for each of the regions.
So I had a little go, found that all of the driving assists were on and turned up to eleventy (it even braked for you...), and got about fifth or sixth on my first go. After my drive out in the 650S, I noticed there wasn't much of a queue for it, so I had another go. I didn't really have anything better to do, and no-one else was waiting, so I cranked a few sessions together - McLaren had a PR person attending to the rig, and she kept restarting it for me. Eventually I tied the time at the top, down to the thousandth of a second. Soon after, I beat it:
Not comfortably, because there's only so much you can do with the car braking for you. It was literally a case of finding where to place it so it didn't activate the traction control.
Anyway, when I beat the time, McLaren's PR said "I didn't know whether you were trying to beat it for pride, or because you really wanted to win the prize."; "What prize?"
It turned out that McLaren was offering prizes. The first was a model P1, for the top time at each event. The second, more significantly, was a 570S for a weekend.
Sadly I wasn't able to take the car when I was expecting to, as my well-publicised minor health issue put a hold on things, but I did finally pick it up a few weeks ago. I went down to the McLaren Technical Centre to collect it, and had a tour of the facility, including the production centre where McLaren hand-builds its cars (from a carbon-fibre tub that's currently made in Austria, but which McLaren will make itself in a new facility near Sheffield from 2019). Photos are limited somewhat - no cameras allowed in the production centre, and because the F1 team's facility is within the MTC, I had to take care not to include anything sensitive in any photographs I did take:
I picked up the 570S from there and drove it home for this review.
By strange coincidence, today I have just been at the second round of McLaren's tour - this time the North event, as I no longer work down in the South. Once again, there was a driving rig set up. This time it had a Logitech G29 and Project CARS 2 - running a 720S around Donington Park. Again, too many driver aids for my liking.
There is one more event in the Tour to go - two days in the Midlands - but the leaderboard currently looks like this:
And yes, I only had four goes at it this time (and look closely at some of the names on there)
This year's prize is a 720S for the weekend. Fingers crossed
- 4,208
- UK
This is an awesome story! Congratulations! 👍There's actually a fun story behind this car too.
As you can imagine, McLaren is a small company (although with a £2bn value, it's the largest privately owned car manufacturer in the UK), making around 3,200 cars a year. They're high value cars - journalists tend to beat on press cars, and when they're done the cars go to auction with a billion miles on them (this week I'm testing a Jeep that already has 11,000 on it, and 11,000 hard miles) - this isn't something a brand like McLaren can easily justify. As a result, the press fleet is a little small.
McLaren thus decided to start doing a tour event. Instead of sending out its five-or-so cars to journos up and down the country, it would instead invite writers to two-day events. That way it could get 150 test drives in a couple of weeks, with not that much expense.
I attended such an event last year, at Goodwood. I drove a McLaren about the local roads, and chased down a camo Rolls-Royce - with Sue Baker, formerly of Top Gear, as it happens. That wasn't this car, it was a 650S:
View attachment 683667
Anyway, in the little refreshment area set up for the attendees, McLaren had a driving rig. The rig had a Playseat and a Logitech G920, and was running Forza Motorsport 6 (which I'd never played, obviously). You could do three lap sessions of Silverstone National in a McLaren P1. There was a short leaderboard, colour-coded for each of the regions.
So I had a little go, found that all of the driving assists were on and turned up to eleventy (it even braked for you...), and got about fifth or sixth on my first go. After my drive out in the 650S, I noticed there wasn't much of a queue for it, so I had another go. I didn't really have anything better to do, and no-one else was waiting, so I cranked a few sessions together - McLaren had a PR person attending to the rig, and she kept restarting it for me. Eventually I tied the time at the top, down to the thousandth of a second. Soon after, I beat it:
View attachment 683672
Not comfortably, because there's only so much you can do with the car braking for you. It was literally a case of finding where to place it so it didn't activate the traction control.
Anyway, when I beat the time, McLaren's PR said "I didn't know whether you were trying to beat it for pride, or because you really wanted to win the prize."; "What prize?"
It turned out that McLaren was offering prizes. The first was a model P1, for the top time at each event. The second, more significantly, was a 570S for a weekend.
Sadly I wasn't able to take the car when I was expecting to, as my well-publicised minor health issue put a hold on things, but I did finally pick it up a few weeks ago. I went down to the McLaren Technical Centre to collect it, and had a tour of the facility, including the production centre where McLaren hand-builds its cars (from a carbon-fibre tub that's currently made in Austria, but which McLaren will make itself in a new facility near Sheffield from 2019). Photos are limited somewhat - no cameras allowed in the production centre, and because the F1 team's facility is within the MTC, I had to take care not to include anything sensitive in any photographs I did take:
View attachment 683677
I picked up the 570S from there and drove it home for this review.
By strange coincidence, today I have just been at the second round of McLaren's tour - this time the North event, as I no longer work down in the South. Once again, there was a driving rig set up. This time it had a Logitech G29 and Project CARS 2 - running a 720S around Donington Park. Again, too many driver aids for my liking.
There is one more event in the Tour to go - two days in the Midlands - but the leaderboard currently looks like this:
View attachment 683681
And yes, I only had four goes at it this time (and look closely at some of the names on there)
This year's prize is a 720S for the weekend. Fingers crossed
- 86,802
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
This James Cameron is the founder of Mission Motorsport, writer for Evo and a Nurburgring veteran. I actually interviewed him for Workshop Magazine last year (which you can read here, if you wish) - and we've featured Mission Motorsport on here before too.
And that's the actual Marino Franchitti on the board too
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