THE ROAD CAR THAT WON LE MANS! The Story of the McLaren F1 GTR
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- Опубліковано 15 сер 2023
- I've been meaning to something on this for a while. Something I've heard loads about but never really got round to looking at in detail.
The McLaren F1 GTR started as a 'oh go on then' by Gordon Murray that somehow managed to win at Le Mans at the first attempt, beating the faster cars through reliability and wet weather driveablility. Must have been an occasion when everything just added up in the right way and would have to take something similar to happen again.
Wasn't the fastest, but was the most consistent.
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My favourite anecdote about this race: JJ Lehto did stick to the agreed lap time. No one just bothered to tell him that the lap time was meant for dry conditions instead of the pouring rain he did those amazing laps in.
As Lehto had done a lot of testing with the McLaren F1 before that Le Mans race, he had driven a lot of miles in that car and therefore knew exactly how it behaved. Lehto knew from experience that the car would provide him the grip he needed to allow him to power on through the rain and he used that experience optimally.
It's so easy to believe that Ron Dennis bit, whether it is apocryphal or not. He was definitely a caricature of himself by that point.
Like the stupid jackets Coulthard and Hakkinen had to wear in the post race interviews.
a One Night Stand joke followed up by a Kurt Angle joke. I loved this channel already, you didn't need to pander to me this much xD 🤣
There's a story I heard that I can't verify, but it sounds like something Ron Dennis would do. Dennis had agreed to build a number of McLaren F1 GTRs to race, and would supply parts for the teams that were going to LeMans. Dennis was approached by the owner of Ueno Clinic in Tokyo, who was an avid F1 owner. Could McLaren provide the parts and personnel to run an entry at LeMans? Dennis refused; the doctor insisted. Finally, Dennis made a deal. The doctor would buy their spare GTR, and pay for the car to race at LeMans. If the car didn't win, the doctor would get the car for his collection. If it won, the car would go to McLaren for their collection. The doctor agreed, the car won, and that's how the only LeMans-winning McLaren ended up on display in their headquarters
Ron Dennis going OCD about windshield stickers sounds just hilarious, I could easily imagine how it'd play out if they happened to make a movie out of this. To be fair for Ron, had he been present at the circuit, he'd probably made sure none of those stickers would've peeled off in the first place.
Ah yes, that one time when a clinic that takes care of gentleman's sausages became a racing sponsor...
and won
The thing to remember with Andretti, is that there is more than one definition of the Triple Crown - Graham Hill defined it as Le Mans, the Indy 500, and the F1 title.
Yes, and I agree with Graham Hill's definition, I think the Monaco GP version is newer creation. And of course, Graham Hill did it by both definitions.
Ron Dennis wanting to pit the car to replace the stickers is such a Ron moment 😂
Love the wrestling references! The F1 and the XJ220 are two of my favourite supercars of all time... Guess NFS II played a great part in that...
Note Mario never once missed Monaco just to do the Indy 500. From 1969 until 1972 he was pretty much part time in F1 in general, only doing a few races each year while competing more in USAC.
The F1 is probably the greatest hypercar ever and easily one of the greatest cars of all time. That it not only won Le Mans at the first attempt is one hell of an achievement, but the fact it was a road car that beat (albeit restricted) prototypes, i.e. pure bred racing cars, was simply remarkable.
Maybe that's what happens when a Formula 1 team not only decides to build a road car and send it racing too, but also bringing a new level of technology & engineering know-how, strategy and racing competence that was beyond what sportscar racing teams were previously capable of. Can you imagine if McLaren actually built a prototype for that race, it'd have probably won by some margin. And remember, Porsche and Mercedes had to build pure bred racing cars (which masqueraded as road cars) to beat the F1.
Went to the MTC recently and they have an F1, GTR and a LM all lined up next to each other, I was starstruck
The McLaren F1 as a road car was remarkable for the 1990s.
Getting that kind of performance out of a road vehicle no larger than the contemporary era Honda Civic, of which I drove one, was remarkably awesome!
Seats three, has ample luggage room (in the side pods), decent ground clearance. Pretty damned impressive.
What's more impressive is Gordon Murray's new car, the T50 - an F1 re-visited. More luggage, still seats three, an insanely quick engine, even better aero, standard tyre sizes, proper fuel tank, decent service interval. The F1 is brilliant, but imagine that with all the "mistakes" ironed out (if you can call them mistakes...).
My favourite bit of trivia about the Ueno Clinic car is that it was sponsored by a clinic in Tokyo which specialises in circumcisions and this gave the car the nickname “Snippet”
Ha ha ha ha
there was also that story that AMG built the CLK-GTR using a F1 as a test mule, but they used "alternative means" to get their hands one McLaren and reverse engineer it
Weird that they had to do that since Mercedes was supplying F1 engines to McLaren at the time....also weird that the F1 road car had a BMW engine....I believe that story though, racing is ruthless.
Its not a story it is facts and there is both articles and photos of it. It was to test their own powerplant and aerodynamics before they had a running car themselfs.
Thank you for telling this amazing story without "but, if the conditions were different..." and not taking anything away from the incredible job that the drivers, team and car did.
In my opinion this should be the true spirit of le mans. Grab a road car, modify it just enough to race legally and try and win your class, if not the outright race.
Speaking of underdogs winning. I don't remember what year it was but one time, as part of the FIA GT championship, there was a rain affected Spa 24hrs. A GT2 Porsche 911 took the overall win with an excellent strategy ahead of the much faster GT1 cars. Perhaps you could look into doing a video on that.
This car, from the moment I first laid eyes on it as a three year old; locked behind the last championships in Need For Speed High Stakes, has always been my favourite racing car of all time.
It’s everything that makes a car awesome- unique, sleek, drop dead gorgeous, has an iconic V12 roar, fast as fuck and has some of the craziest stories in motorsport, especially with Le Mans ‘95. It makes me nostalgic for a time before I was born.
In 1995, I wasn't really aware of motorsports beyond CART, Indycar, NASCAR, and the tiny amount of F1 that was on at a time I would be awake in my timezone. Yet the McLaren F1 somehow became my all-time favorite automobile. All of its superlative statistics have been surpassed, but I have yet to see a more beautiful car, or one that is so clearly a passion project. The LeMans win only adds to the mystique of a car that did everything the hard way.
No mention of the sponsor? Ueno clinic is quite the sponsor for this car to have had
I was always a huge JJ fan boy as a kid. I carried a huge Finnish flag from America to England to a DTM race at Donnington I think just in the hopes I could get him to sign it. Almost gave up hope that would see him and my brother shouts to me there he is. I was so nervous I didn't say a word but he laughed and signed my flag. Maybe the only time I was starstruck.
Tremendous!!
Amazing
I remember watching parts of that race as a 13 year old. Waking up on Sunday to see the F1s in the lead.
I loved the bpr series because of all the cewl cars, but those McLarens were on another planet back then... nigh on untouchable . But seeing them win against those bespoke prototypes .... mind-boggling.
And this, right here, is why the F1 is forever glued to the top of my 'best cars ever' list. Bear in mind that on the road it was a genuine GT car capable of crossing continents with three people inside, leave both spines and eardrums intact while carrying enough luggage that they wouldn't have to immediately go shopping on arrival. Then they took some power *out*, chucked the road car interior in the bin, glued a new wing to the back and, presto, one Le Mans win. Even then it's not so much the speed but the fact it survived the most demanding road race on the planet that's really impressive. No wonder their owners tended to actually drive them before prices went ridiculous!
All of which makes it such a downer that the powers that be, in their infinite stupi... uh, wisdom decided not to craft the new rules for endurance racing to allow the new breed of ridiculous track cars to compete. Can you imagine seeing a bunch of Valkyries, AMG One's and GMA T.50S on the grid? Still blows my mind that with the current regs the first thing they'd need to do to run a T.50S is add a couple of *hundred* kilos of ballast in somewhere. Then again maybe those in charge took a look at what happened last time and decided they don't want to find out what would happen when Gordon, Adrian and the likes actually set out to build a *race* car...
I've heard this story a million times but I will happily listen to someone new serenade my hero car.
As a Finn I can tell, that "Jyrki Järvilehto" is pronounced in English properly like "Jyrci Jaervileh'To", but we just call him as "JJ".
Didn't knew before last video that "JJ" even tested McLaren in '94 and had his fingers on this project so much!
If I remember correctly, there were bit of rumors in '99 that he might be contender for BMW Williams-seat due his experience on BMW and F1.
This story is true that Masanori Sekiya, had... ehmn some connections to Tokyo Ueno Clinic, witch is... let's say that clinic for men, who has...
Low selfconfidence, let's but it like that.
I had to Google it when David Land mentioned it in his McLaren Indy 500 throwback video.
JJ Lehto in drove a boat at 80kmh straight to concrete, and killed a man. But in court was like "bro was driving i told him to slow down". But yea, never managed to get his foot off the throttle that guy.
Was a strange case that one.
@@Bezos-cp9gk bruv ’Allah’ is ‘God’ in english, it’d be me saying ‘in the name of Jumala, do not be a heretic and only praise the name Jumala and none of the impostors’. But yea, i’ve had a question; could Allah, God, Jumala, whatever you call it could they heat up a burrito so hot, that they themselves could not eat it? So omnipotentism… random forum btw idk why you’re approaching me his this thread XD
I thought it was Thomas Bscher who was pretty instrumental in the F1 going racing. Long time ago I read an article about Thomas Bscher - then a banker in Germany with a sports car racing hobby - and how he pestered and pestered McLaren to do a race version. He apparently even went over to Woking to plead personally with Ron Dennis into doing it. Apparently Ron eventually caved in and said something like "Ok Thomas, we'll do you a race car". But Ron, ever the crafty one, continued, "But of course, you'll need one for the road too". And so Thomas Bscher bought 2 McLaren F1s...
Thomas Bscher was the guy whose F1's telemetry had logged a >200mph average speed in Germany, which Woking attributed to some sort of fault but Bscher reassured them that this was consistent with the commute he was using the car for.
Fantastic car, and that edition of Le Mans was an amazing race. I'm wondering if Gordon Murray's T50 can be the next drive-to-the-circuit-win-drive-home hyper car. Could do, with an engine like the one it's got.
And Ron Simmons said damn!
From what I remember they could have driven that McLaren F1 GTR to the circuit won the race and then driven it home that is what they could have done to cement that place as a fully legal car...but it wasnt so they couldnt because RACECAR!
Amazing story. Tremendous heritage and prestige at McLaren.
The F1 design is so timeles👌 especially when you see how dated other cars from that era look now like the XJ220 and EB110.
Great video. Great car.
Can you do a video on the Williams Renault BTCC Laguna?? I wonder if it’s the only team to win the BTCC and F1 title in the same year.
Cheers Tyson
It’s still the King of Road Cars
I remember watching some sequences of that. I loved the looks of that McLaren F1 GTR (and still do), and wasn't looking favourably to the prototypes of that year: all of them open cockpit ones, the likes of which ever looked ugly to me. I was delighted with that very unexpected victory, but didn't know the details. Nice to learn about them!
I was also found of the long tail version which, alas, wasn't as lucky as all GT1s lost to the ugly bunch on both following years.
I think it’s also fair to say this was the last car you could drive to the track, win, and drive back home in. If only they did that last part just to beat the win into the history books just a little bit harder😂
I did not know that winner was basically stock. That is incredible ❤
Baked potatoes career was at peak when he was called baked potato after in fire😂 props if you know who called him baked potato
Can't forget the 295 mph run by the SSC Tuatara.
Stared at this car for a good 15 minutes at Goodwood this year, mere inches away!
Also the last time an actual production car won LeMans, no we're not counting the totally not a bespoke protoype Porsche GT1 98.
When that Macca was released so the vast unwashed could ogle, it absolutely stole hearts everywhere. That was GM's best car design ever. It's nearly as beautiful as the Mk II E-Type, and trust me, that's about as big a compliment as a car will get from me.
It's a toss-up between this and the exquisite Jag XK8/R (designed by an incredibly talented lady, whose name sadly escapes me - I don't want to stop the video to look it up. She was considered to be the potential leader of women in car design. Heartbreakingly, she was killed in a car crash in California IIRC. Very young, too).
Excellent video as ever, young man!
If you like the F1, take a look at Gordon Murray's T50. The fan on the back is a bit of an eyesore, but the rest of it is amazing, and (one can scarcely believe it) an "improvement" on the F1 in every way...
Speaking of injury, did you know that on an ECW show in 2000 Vic Grimes botched a table spot with New Jack, who fell 20 feet to the ground, fractured his skull and lost vision in one eye? And as a receipt, on an indie show in 2002, while on a scaffold 40 feet above the ground, New Jack pulled out a taser and tased Grimes and then attempted to "accidentally" miss the stack of tables Grimes was supposed to fall though in order to murder him dead? And that Grimes managed to clip the tables as he fell so he was only severely injured?
So, you were saying something about race cars?
@@Bezos-cp9gk Not the topic.
@@JejkingAnd I'm certain Jeff Bezos only worships himself much less any gods.
BE GONE, BOT
Some say he drove an F1 car with a broken neck and that he hates the Makers of Scrabble for not having enough 8 point tiles.
All we know he's called the Jyrki Juhani Järvilehto.
(but a J is worth only 4 points in Finnish? Don't tell the ACO, they will DQ the poor guy!)
There's a BRG McLaren F1 at the REVS Institute in SW Florida. Awesome!!
You got a like just for the Kurt Angle reference 😂 love your videos
The long-tail version is one of my dream cars
Oh, I have been waiting for this for a long time.
Another fascinating video. Very well done.
awesome video again, looking forward to the next one
You should do a video about the 1979 24 hours of le mans. Race was won by 2 Texans drug smugglers and klaus ludwig with a porsche 935.
Hello Aidan: This was really great. Thank you.
Thank you!
Was this not the car that drive from England to Le Mans on public roads and then won the race? If I remember correctly Gordon's only regret was they didn't drive it back to England. I think they parties hard so thought best to put it on a truck.
10:06 You mentioned John Nielsen in the last two video, He did very similar "gymnastics" in a Sauber Mercedes in 1985, except he landed on the track not in the woods
Oh it's true, its damn true.
🥇
Amazing car, and such understated looks, almost a sleeper compared to cars capable of the same speeds today.
With the exception of the car which won the first ever LeMans, the F1 is the only car to win at the first attempt.
Unless you're going to say the 787B is a completely different car to the 787?
Porsche 956 and this year's Ferrari?
Just to note the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ made it to 304 mph & the Veyron was a quad turbo v16
I don't know who else is here for wrestling in jokes mixed into racing info but I'm definitely here for it
Omds I literally just watched a video from Stevie Richards talking about that receipt 🤣🤣😭
Mario whined that it was not a real racecar and should not have been allowed to enter. Considering HOW the Big Mac is built and what it takes to maintain one is well beyond many 'race cars' Whineo Sphagetti ever won in, including actual F1 cars. Also, Bill Auberlen stated that on the LMGTR: The engineers asked the drivers if we wanted another gear in the box. We replied 'No, we have enough torque and don't need to waste time shifting.'
Last time a road car won le mans
The McLaren F1 cars that ran at La Mans in 1995 were detuned. The road car version had too much HP, which was due to the limitations placed on cars at La Mans. So McLaren had to reduce the air intake and detune the engine to get the desired reduced HP.
The car that won (car 59) had the work that turned into a race car started 6 weeks before the La Mans race. It had one outing at a test track before the La Mans race, and then went on to be the first car to cross the finish line on the first appearance of a McLaren F1 at Ma Mans.
I believe the five McLaren F1 cars that were entered finished 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 12th. The McLaren F1 winning La Mans on its maiden outing is a feat that has never been repeated.
The McLaren F1 240.1 MPH speed record is a record that stood for 20 years.
Come for mclaren gtrs, stay for the JBL getting his head bashed in with a steel chair
The 79 le man's is a similar and also equally good story. I wonder if you have covered it? If so I shall watch. If not you should make lol.
Amazing, and I thouht some guy in a 1957-ish Triumph Tr-3A did so well (disc brakes, like Jaguar.). Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Nooo I was hoping for a third wrestling reference after the Kurt Angle saying! But another great video!
PS - JBL is an utter knob bro and I was so glad to see someone clean his clock bro….I hate JBL….
Good wrestling references 😂
I am a simple man. I see a Fina livery Mclaren F1 GTR as a thumbnail, i click.
Imagine it had been made for the track in 95. Damn
Sounds like you're trying to branch out into a motorsports-pro wrestling super channel 😁
Nice
Then usurped by the superior clone, the CLK-GTR
I think i saw 1 of these on the road the other dày. It had a wing
Never seen any f1 before
It may be a road car but this thing was almost entirely carbon fiber and weighed very little, had 2 fans in its ground effect tunnels powered by motors to reduce the pressure underneath and essentially be a Chapparal 2J or a Brabham BT46B or a very slow Red Bull X2010.
Thoughts on doing a video about Senna hitting the wall and claiming it moved? It would be pretty short, but it might work while you are in your moving period.
The stuff about driving upside down at 100mph stock fucked me up. it would need to produce more than 1160 kg of downforce at 100mph (thats the cars weight with fluids and fuel, no driver) to be able to do it, at least in theory. Valkyrie produces around 1200 kg of downforce at around 220mph. Now compare a stock F1 to a Valkyrie from an aerodynamic perspective.
My favorite car is the F1. This s is the best
When you make One Night Stand jokes, you annoy a Blampied somewhere... 😂 But more seriously, I was (and still am) a huge fan of both the XJ and the McLaren. Two GOATs among super/hypercars...
The Veyron and Veyron SS both have quad turbos...
Isn’t the Bug Veyron a quad turbo?
I thought the buggati chiron super sport holds the current record for fastest production car
Gordon Murray and McLaren didn't want to go to Le Mans. Ray Bellm, he of Listerine BMW fame was the one who arm twisted them in to it.
On one hand I adore this car. On the other hand, it stopped my favourite driver of all time from taking the triple crown
Andretti never won Monaco so he was denied nothing.
@@AidanMillward fair, though he's a WDC and for some that's the criterion
I usually go off the three races
Agreed. The three races is the only criteria to use.
But which ECW One Night Stand had JBL beating up the Blue Meanie?!
I was waiting for a Cena reference.....or Edge
Didn't the XJ220 hold the record for a time? I'm trying to remember but I think the EB110 had a speed of 217mph. I always thought it went
959
F40
XJ220
F1
I thought the deal with the XJ220 was some technicality: license plate/street legality, maybe that they went in one direction but not the other, or something else that prevented them being officially counted, and by the time the F1 debuted (which was what, 2 years later?) made it pointless to them to pursue.
@SAHOYT71013 I think they removed the catalytic converters from the car when they hit 217MPH on that circle track in Italy with Martin Brundle driving it. I might be mistaken as I'm going of memory.
@@kizzagt Nardo, VW's test track right? And cat converters were what I was trying to remember, ty
@SAHOYT71013 Not that track that circle track which Clarkson, Hammond and May did top speed runs on with an Aventador, MP4-12C and Noble M600
I was hoping you would have talked a little about the strange sponsor. The clinic is known for specializing in the male member, with STD treatments and plastic surgery being the standouts.
Amazing Car
Didn`t Jaguar XJ220 hold world fastest production title for a couple of years after it was launched in 1992?
the best car ever made. With big gap to other cars. (for me)
240mph is the stock actually, because the one that had higher rev limiter could do 390km/h+
I believe the Konigsegg Agera RS is actually twin charged not twin turbocharged.
yes yes i did know about the JBL blue meanie incident it was a shot shot wrestling is when pro wrestling becomes real same as when brock Lesnar punched brawn in the face
And then in 1999 BMW wins the race with "8 year old engine'" ...
2:33 Porsche 1959
Your video has triggered what might be a false memory - did that 1997 Panoz entry have something to do with Noel Edmunds? I'm sure that there was a documentary on TV about it around that time...
Or maybe I'm having a yoooj brain fart...
#59: COCKMOBILE
McLaren will never return to greatness under Zeke brown regime.
And some luck