Who needs Top Gear? As we kept waiting for them to bring Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari together in a hypercar shootout, the whole show went and got itself canceled! Thankfully, there are others out there ready to get the job done.
Such is the case with Motor Trend, who set out to see which is faster around a track, the McLaren P1 or thePorsche 918 Spyder - still waiting on the LaFerrari though.
And yes, they did try to get it, just that Ferrari refused yet again. We're not entirely sure what the problem may have been. Was it that they prefer The Stig to Motor Trend's race-car driver, Randy Pobst? That would be a silly reason not to do this.
Regardless, what we have here is a pretty definitive result, proving that the 887 HP Porsche 918 is quicker around Laguna Seca than the 903 HP McLaren P1, even though the P1 isn't just more powerful, but it's lighter by about 150kgs too.
The Porsche lapped the track in 1:29.89 while the McLaren did it in 1:30.71, which is almost a second slower, and that's not something we should easily ignore. All-wheel drive does go a long way indeed.
Granted, Laguna Seca is the type of track that heavily rewards cars that can put all their power down as soon as they exit the corners.
Pobst said that "The McLaren could not exit the four slow corners at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca the way the 918 could, a clear and present contrast."
We'd love to have more data though, and see these two go at each other on several other tracks.
Still, Motor Trend did say that the P1 was the "quickest-accelerating production car we've ever tested", which means this case is definitely not closed. It's conceivable that given better circumstances, it could do a quicker lap than the 918 Spyder if they were on a faster track. But hey, let's not speculate and just go with these results already.
Massive win for Porsche!
Opening screenshot via EVO video (from Nov. 2014)
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