McLaren Senna makes a tyre-smoking appearance

McLaren has made an unexpected dynamic reveal of its brutal new supercar, the Senna.

The British marque’s latest track-focused weapon made a surprise appearance this week during the launch of the McLaren Composite Technology Centre in Sheffield, England, a site set to specialise in future carbon fibre chassis development and production.

A video uploaded by Youtube user Máté Petrány shows the Senna being flung sideways before the crowd.

Arriving five years after the physics-bending P1 hypercar, the Senna is the second member of McLaren’s flagship Ultimate Series. Its name pays tribute to the firm’s greatest grand prix driver, Brazilian Ayrton Senna.

McLaren insists the Senna is not a direct replacement for the P1 hypercar, even though its extreme finish might suggest otherwise.

The car’s extroverted styling is borne out of extreme active aerodynamics; namely, a massive rear wing and front splitter. There are umpteen air dams and strakes, inlets, along with a wild looking rear complete with a centrally-positioned ‘slash cut’ exhaust outlet.

Beneath its svelte exterior, the Senna boasts a chassis fashioned from carbon fibre and an aluminium subframe, codenamed Monocage III, with two years’ worth of engineering and design behind it. The lightweight structure wraps a mid-mounted twin-turbo V8 that resists the growing trend of electrification to augment traditional internal combustion.

With no form of electrification, the Senna tips the scales at 1198kg dry, incredibly undercutting the existing 720S by 220kg.

McLaren isn’t naming official performance figures at this point, instead saving finer details for an official reveal in the coming weeks. Based on its current model range, a 0-100km/h time of 2.5 seconds is well within reach.

The Senna’s rich performance bent reflects its sole focus as a track machine, McLaren says, bringing “the purest connection between driver and car of road-legal McLaren”.

As such, the Senna forgoes many of the day-to-day luxuries commensurate with other McLarens: there is little cabin storage or luggage space and no door switches, lightweight seats and a simplified roof console containing many traditional ancillary controls.

Among the Senna’s aerodynamic suite is a rear wing that can be adjusted by about 20 degrees to essentially endow the car with either high-speed downforce, braking drag and a Formula One-inspired “DRS mode” for straight line speed.

Similarly, small blades in the front air scoops, just above the splitter, move automatically to balance front to rear downforce, including in corners.

An all-independent, double wishbone suspension layout underpins the Senna, complete with specially tuned dampers that are said to be hydraulically connected, from front to rear and side to side.

The Senna will be officially revealed at the Geneva motor show in March, with the first order of 500 cars arriving to customers before the end of 2018. It is understood all 500 are already spoken for.