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Revealed: the 789bhp McLaren
Senna hypercar
The new ‘Ultimate Series’ McLaren is the company’s fastest and most extreme car ever
It’s the second instalment of McLaren’s Ultimate Series, five years after the P1 rearranged our
understanding of the natural world. Now it has a name – the McLaren Senna. Bold move, right,
naming it after arguably the world’s greatest racing driver? But when you learn that Bruno Senna,
Ayrton’s nephew, has been involved in the development, and its mission statement is to be the
company’s most focused and effective track car ever, it fits.
Unlike the P1, it is not a hybrid. You’ll find no battery ballast or e-motors here, just a
development of the 720S’s 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 wound up to 789bhp and producing 590lb ft
of torque, channeled through McLaren’s trusty seven-speed twin-clutch ‘box. These are numbers
that are no longer startling in the world of 1,400bhp+ hypercars, but when you combine that
figure with the Senna’s obsessive focus on weight and downforce, its potency grows.
McLaren claims a dry weight of 1,198kg, 85kg less than the 720S despite packing 79bhp more.
That’s 553bhp-per-tonne for the 720S versus 659bhp-per-tonne for the Senna – quite some leap.
48 / ABSOLUT MAGAZINE
ABSOLUT MAGAZINE / 49