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Michael Taylor8 Mar 2017
NEWS

GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: McLaren debuts 720S

Faster, lighter, stronger, sleeker for McLaren second-generation supercar

Storied but still young Anglo-Kiwi sportscar maker, McLaren, has officially sped into unchartered territory with its stunning 720S supercar.

The 537kW, 4.0-litre twin-turbo monster is lighter, faster and stiffer than the 650S, but the real news is that it is McLaren’s first ever second-generation road car.

Although McLaren built the legendry F1 back in early 1990s, no second-gen model followed it. The modern McLarens debuted via the MP4-12C and then 650 family, and now the 720S has arrived.

The 720S’s second-generation carbon-fibre tub is backed up by an intelligent car-wide computer system set up to maximize handling and speed, the engine has had an overhaul and even the tyres are custom made.

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McLaren, for its part, insists it just tried to deliver the car with the broadest possible performance range it has ever made.

McLaren claims 91 per cent of the 720S parts are all new, with 1500 new parts. The focus on digital validation has been so strong, the company says it will have “no experimental prototype phase for this car”.

That should hearten anybody who has kept tabs on the organisation’s Formula 1 team in the last couple of years. Or weeks...

The 720S has been regularly leaked (mostly by McLaren) in the lead up to its Geneva debut, but the revolutionary super sportscar looks far better in the flesh than in the snippets that have been seen on the internet.

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We saw the car in England more than a month ago and can now reveal a few things about it that might shock. For example, it is 4sec quicker to 300km/h than the 650S and can complete the quarter-mile sprint in just 10.3sec.

Gone are the clumsy, clunky side air intakes, replaced with side air blades that directs engine air into tiny air intakes ahead of the rear wheels.

There is also more than a touch of Ferrari’s superseded 458 Italia about the fuselage of the new McLaren, with its sculpted, folded flanks though, it breaks new ground beyond the wheelbase.

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The thin headlights double as air intakes for the engine cooling radiators, while the tops of the dihedral doors are adorned with the huge chunks cut out of the car’s roof, like a 1960s Ford GT40, purely to make it easier to get in and out of.

McLaren also claims the car is all about lightness as well as strength, speed and art. It’s right, too, with the 720S weighing just 1290kg dry, or 1419kg with a driver and 90 per cent of its fuel load on board.

That, and a slippery shape that’s twice as aerodynamically efficient as its predecessor, leaves the M840T twin-turbo V8 with a lot less pushing to do than before.

How fast?
McLaren got serious about speed. Not necessarily to 100km/h, because that’s as much limited by the rear-wheel drive layout as anything else.

At 2.9sec, it only slips past 100km/h a scant 0.1sec faster than its predecessor, but then the slippery aero and the extra grunt start kicking in. Indeed, the 720S runs 0-200km/h in 7.8sec (0.6 quicker than before, and half a second quicker than the Ferrari 488 GTB) and from 0-300km/h in 21.4sec -- a staggering 4sec quicker than the 650S.

For those who love their straight-line sprinting, it knocks over the quarter-mile sprint in 10.3sec (0.5 quicker than before) and it adds 8km/h to the top speed to peak at 341km/h.

Break that down a bit and the 720S shoots from 100-200km/h in just 4.9sec (the 650S took 5.4). Then it walks its way from 200-300km/h in 13.6sec, where the car it replaces took all of 17sec.

Stronger engine
The V8 is largely, but not all, new. It’s a development of the outgoing engine, but it’s 195cc bigger. The bore remains the same, but the capacity moves to 3994cc, thanks to adding 3.6mm to the stroke, so McLaren’s calling it a 4.0-litre engine.

It’s just about the biggest source of carry-over parts, though, with only 41 per cent of the engine’s bits considered new. They are significant bits, however, like the turbochargers, intercoolers, plenum, cylinder heads, crankshaft, wastegates and pistons.

“The new 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged M840T V8 engine marks a revolutionary step forwards for McLaren with lighter internal component and new twin-scroll turbochargers contributing to huge increases in power, response and efficiency,” McLaren’s Super Series vehicle line director, Haydn Baker, insisted.

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“A 720 horsepower engine that delivers just 249g/km CO2 in the NEDC is unrivalled in the supercar class, and beyond even our own ambitious expectations at the start of development.”

Even though the M840T’s 537kW peak arrives at 7500rpm, the powerhouse keeps revving to 8100rpm before it hits the limiter in first gear, then 8200 in each of the next six gears in the dual-clutch transmission.

The turbochargers are a big step forward, moving to twin-scroll architecture and capable of spinning up to 160,000rpm. Light in weight and low in inertia, they help the Gen II McLaren to deliver 770Nm of torque from 5500-6500rpm, giving it a fat, strong mid range.

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Both the wastegates and dump valves are electronically controlled to bring more response at lower revs.

Astonishingly (for this day and age), McLaren has eschewed direct fuel-injection for old-school indirect port fuel-injection (albeit via two injectors per cylinder). Lamborghini pulls the same trick with the V12 Aventador, so it’s not completely unprecedented in the modern age.

Of the other new bits, the plenum is now made from cast aluminium, the pistons, connecting rods and the crankshaft are all lighter and the top of the motor sits 120mm lower than on the 650S.

The handling stuff
McLaren is making big handling claims for its new super-sports. Much bigger, in fact, than the claims it’s making for the engine.

It’s saying the 720S rides more comfortably than the 650S ever did and it’s as good on a track as the most track focused of the brand’s track-pack cars.

It’s putting this all down to a combination of increased stiffness from its carbon-fibre tub, slipperier aerodynamics and a bunch of boffins at the University of Cambridge in England.

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Not only is there more carbon in the tub than before, including the entire upper structure, but it now includes very thin A-pillars to improve visibility.

Lowering the top of the engine (the tail of the car is down 145mm, too) also helped pull the centre of gravity down by three percent.

The engine and suspension systems all sit in aluminium sub frames attached directly to the tub. New wishbones and uprights lower the car’s unsprung mass by 16kg.

The 720S still uses an open differential, which is almost laughable in theory, it still runs a conventional hydraulic power steering system and it still eschews anti-roll bars in favour of diagonally linked dampers.

Even Pirelli is getting in on the act, claiming its PZero Corsa rubber alone generates six per cent more lateral grip. The Italian-made 245/35 ZR19 front and 305/30 ZR20 rubber wraps around forged alloy wheels to save weight, though they can also wrap around some even more special forged alloy wheels that are another 12.5kg lighter.

The brakes are based around 390mm front carbon-ceramic discs and 380mm rear discs, which help it to stop from 100km/h in 29.7 and from 200km/h in 117 metres (6m fewer than the 650S), or just 4.6sec.

The software stuff
It’s not just with hardware that McLaren is upping the ante. The company has been delving into an advanced mathematics research program from the University of Cambridge called Optimal Control Theory and it has come up with some new ideas.

For starters, there are now 12 handling-exclusive sensors dotted around the car, including an accelerometer at each corner, which it hooks together to inform Proactive Chassis Control II.

The idea is that its drivers can have Comfort, Sport and Track modes at their disposal, with constantly variable damping to suit whatever the car is doing and what kind of road it’s doing it on.

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The new governing algorithms take two milliseconds to receive, process and respond to new information, then punch its decisions back around the car to make stuff happen.

One of the things it takes control over, which was already there, is the Brake Steer system, which was banned from Formula 1 back when McLaren used to be competitive. The system brakes the inside wheels to stop understeer, except instead of the driver having to do it on the F1 car, the new system handles it automatically.

It also governs the variable drift mode, which uses a slide to catch a slide. If the car’s in Sport or Track mode with the skid-control on Dynamic, it can then move to a drift mode.

The selected slip angle for the drift comes up on a bar on the 720S’s eight-inch multimedia screen in the central display. Then you can just swipe it one way for a wilder drift or back the other for a more modest slide.

There’s also a full telemetry system, which can record the throttle angle, the lateral and longitudinal g readings as well as sector times, lap times and speed. It can even record from its forward-facing camera to help the driver work through serious lap or cornering analysis.

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Body and aero
For all the carbon-fibre talk (McLaren has never built a road-car chassis from any other material), there is still aluminium aplenty, including some of the body panels.

Those panels have all been stretched and tweaked to double the car’s aero efficiency over the 650S.

The most obvious addition to the aero package is the headlights, which look like weird eye sockets. They have thin indicator light flanked above and below by air intakes to get clean air in, early.

The car also has complex side aerodynamics to flow the engine air into the tiny intakes ahead of the rear wheels. Regardless of how small they are, McLaren insists it swallows more air now than before and the overall cooling efficiency is up 15 per cent.

One of the obvious parts to the 720S’ aero package is the full-width rear wing. This delivers 30 per cent more downforce than the 650S arrangement and doubles as an air brake. It also shifts the centre of aerodynamic pressure forward under braking to enhance stability.

It does more than that, though, with the hydraulically-operated wing angled to deliver 70-80 per cent of its peak downforce whenever the driver hits the Aero button. It pulls this down to just 30 per cent when it’s acting in DRS low-drag, higher speed mode and cranks it to 100 per cent under hard braking.

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Other stuff
Those doors, which look inspired by the Ford GT40, answer one of the key criticisms of the 650S. It was too hard for some people to get into.

The doors cut deep into the roof and open 80 degrees, occupying 155mm less space each side than on the 650S. They open to 1953mm high, leaving operational space in most regular garages.

There’s also now a folding instrument cluster. For Track mode, it can fold down to reduce distractions, keeping just the shift lights displayed.

Inside, the McLaren uses a 150-litre storage bin in the nose, but has another 210-litre space behind the two seats.

The car’s switchgear is made from solid aluminium pieces. The car even has a 360-degree birds-eye view camera to help it park.

 650S  720S  Difference
 Power  478kW  537kW  +59kW
 Torque  678Nm  770Nm  +92Nm
 Weight  1330kg  1283kg  -47kg
 0-100km/h  3.0sec  2.9sec  -0.1sec
 0-200km/h  8.4sec  7.8sec  -0.6sec
 0-300km/h  25.4sec  21.4sec  -4.0sec
 Quarter Mile  10.8sec  10.3sec  -0.5sec
 Top speed  333km/h  341km/h  +8km/h
 CO2 emissions  275g/km  249g/km  -26g/km
 NEDC  11.7L/100km  10.7L/100km  -1.0L/100km
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Written byMichael Taylor
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