BBC_Top_Gear_South_Africa_June_2017

TRACK MODE
MC720S DRIVE
An optional track telemetry
kit links into the car’s
electronic bus, plus
a set of cameras, and maps
of tracks
It records every fraction
of a second of every
lap: the cam-feed,
plus dozens of data
points from the car
Look back at speed, throttle,
steering, brakes, g-force,
and many more. Then
download to USB for further
analysis, you geek
Sorry, I’ve approached things inside-out. The outside is a thing of
beauty. You probably don’t want me to waste your time regurgitating
designer claptrap about “form following function”, or “if it looks right it
is right” or “taking inspiration from the wind-driven shapes of nature”
or the most worn-out of the lot: “it looks like it’s moving even when it’s
standing still”. And yet, as a shorthand, maybe they’ll do. The front end
has a shark-like profile, and the air intakes around the headlamps give
them an eye-like nature. The side profile is stretched, for two reasons.
First the gloss-black glass bubble effectively lowers the painted
bodyside, and also because the doors and wings hide their airchannelling.
Instead, you have a smooth dune-like surface that dances
with the light. The outer panels are aluminium, because it can be
painted to a better finish than carbon fibre.
Round the back, it’s long and low. In fact the engine’s top is
significantly lowered versus the 650S’s. The engine is lit by red LEDs
when you first unlock it. The tail-lights, more LEDs, define the swelling
form of the rear wings. It’s lovely. One quibble: the number of cut-lines
in the cockpit, because of all those pieces of glass and the doors carving
into the roof, make matters a little messy in the rear-three-quarter view.
But the tint of the glass helps disguise it, and anyway most onlookers
will be gazing at exhausts and transmission casing, visible through big
grilles as if in museum display cases.
Above those mechanical parts, a compound-curved spoiler is raised,
angled and lowered again at the behest of a complex series of algorithms
whose inputs include the aero mode you’ve selected and the speed you’re
going. Plus whether that speed is rising or falling, and how much you’re
steering – respectively DRS, air-braking, or downforce.
At the moment, I’m on the road and the corners are too tight for
downforce to play. Here I’m all about the fun, not about the absolute
grip. Every other carmaker claims that electric steering is needed to
save the odd gramme of CO2. I’m not convinced: its endless march is
being perpetuated by the fact it enables lane-keeping and self-parking
and other stuff that has little place on a sports car. But whatever,
McLaren has dug its heels in and stuck with the hydraulic sort. It’s even
improved the system, via front-end geometry changes.
JUNE 2017
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