Photo: screenshot
If you’re a fan of Top Gear then you probably know that during one of their last episodes aired, the trio from the BBC wanted to pit the three hybrid hypercars of the moment against each other. Not only that but in case the Porsche 918 Spyder is faster than the McLaren P1 a certain somebody promised to legally change his name to Jennifer.
All jokes aside though, it’s a question a lot of people have asked themselves ever since they first saw the three and their amazing specs. The Top Gear team tried to get them all to race against each other on their track but not only did the manufacturers forbid them to do such things, they also didn’t allow them to ‘take the cars round their track’.
Why? Well, all sorts of reasons were invoked and there are more than one story floating around, it depends who you believe. According to Clarkson, McLaren wanted to have customer cars going against each other which only makes sense.
A customer car is the car as you would buy it and drive it, with no alterations, modifications and what nots. This might be a surprise to some but Ferrari (and other manufacturers as well as a matter of fact) are known to have specially tuned press cars in order to perform better than an average ‘customer car’ for certain… shady purposes.
On the other hand, according to the same Jezza, the Italians insisted that they are all factory cars which is downright blatantly, incredibly stupid. It’s like they are simply not standing behind their product.
Not only that but it was implied that if any customer sent his LaFerrari over for testing purposes, he’d never be able to buy a new one from the Scuderia. That’s even worse!
Then there was the issue of the track. According to Top Gear, McLaren actually used their track in the car’s development so the P1 would have the edge here. That’s why the Italians asked for a different, neutral circuit and we can understand this demand.
Porsche was absolutely quiet and they agreed with all the terms. In fact, the guys from MotorTrend tested the 918 against the P1 on Laguna Seca and the Spyder came out on top mostly because of its better grip thanks to the four-wheel drive system it uses.
McLaren, however, claimed that they were ready to go on Top Gear as well, having a car on standby for such purposes. They made this claim via Twitter just after the show, to explain to their customers and fans just what happened. Unfortunately, Ferrari was still undecided and I’m guessing they’re more than happy that the show was cancelled…
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