The McLaren W1 Is a Technological Marvel. Here's How It All Works

Over a decade after the P1 rocked the automotive world, McLaren has unveiled its newest hypercar, the W1. Like its successor, the W1 is a rear-wheel drive hybrid with a V-8 mounted in the middle. But that doesn’t even come close to telling the full story. This is a far more advanced car in every way. Here’s what makes it so fascinating.

High-Downforce, Low-Drag Aerodynamics

So much of this car’s story is about aerodynamics, which is what you’d expect from an automaker tied to a Formula 1 team. McLaren quotes a maximum figure of 2,205 pounds at 174 miles per hour, which is close to the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s 2,425 pounds, and exceeds the McLaren Senna’s 1,800 pounds. 

The Valkyrie is an interesting point of comparison because it’s the only other road car that relies so heavily on underbody, “ground effect” aerodynamics, rather than traditional over-body appendages. This helps maximize downforce without adding too much drag, which would rob straight-line performance.

Various active aerodynamic systems allow the W1 to reach a top speed of 217 mph—the same as the P1’s, despite the fact that the W1 is capable of generating far more downforce.

The front wing is active, moving in an arc to add or trim downforce on the front axle as needed, while at the rear is what McLaren calls an “Active Long Tail” wing. Inspired by the long-tail bodywork of the 1997 F1 GTR race car, the rear bodywork can extend by nearly a foot to increase the effectiveness of the underbody diffuser.

Speaking of which, the diffuser has wide tunnels that start curving up just behind the cabin and in front of the rear axle. Like the Bugatti Tourbillon, the diffuser also acts as a rear bumper, strong enough to take serious impacts without the need for an additional (heavy) structure. Even the powertrain is angled down by 3 degrees to allow more room for diffuser channels. 

There are other neat F1-esque details, for example, the intakes shaped like the undercut side pods we’ve seen in F1 cars for a few years now. The seats are fixed in place, helping reduce frontal area, and instead, the pedal box and wheel come toward the driver. This means the driver’s feet will be higher than their hips, as has been the case in F1 and sports-prototype race cars for many years now.

F1-Inspired Suspension

Even the front suspension helps boost downforce and brake cooling. McLaren uses double wishbones, as you’d expect, but it also has pushrods, torsion-bar springs, and inboard dampers like an F1 car, moving a lot of suspension components out of the airflow. The wishbones and uprights are made from 3D-printed titanium, and the lower wishbones are mounted high up and shaped like aerofoils, to contribute to the overall downforce. There’s also a heave damper, another racing-derived device, that helps prevent the body from lowering too much under load. There’s also no separate front subframe on the W1, with the suspension components bolting directly to the carbon-fiber chassis.

With a high-downforce car, you need a stable aerodynamic platform, and that comes from the suspension. Like the P1, the W1 has road and race settings, the latter dropping ride height by 1.46 inches at the front and 0.7 inches at the rear, and massively increasing spring rates and damping force. 

The rear suspension is somewhat more conventional, with traditional coilover springs over dampers, as the rear downforce is generated by the diffuser. By moving those suspension components further outboard, McLaren can use wider, steeper, and therefore more effective diffuser channels. However, McLaren also has what it calls “active drop-links” which work with a Z-shaped anti-roll bar to control heave without the need for a “third element” like the heave damper at the front. We’ve asked McLaren for more information on this particular system. We also asked how, specifically, ride height is adjusted.

A Brand-New Hybrid V-8

The modern McLaren Automotive as we know it has used a twin-turbo V-8 derived from a Nissan racing design dating back to the 1980s. With the W1, McLaren debuts its second in-house engine design after the 120-degree V-6 of the Artura, a twin-turbocharger 4.0-liter V-8 capable of 916 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque, and a 9,200-rpm redline. For those keeping track at home, that’s as much horsepower as the P1’s V-8 and hybrid system had combined.

Naturally, there are neat details. Like a lot of the latest ultra-high-performance combustion engines, the so-called MHP-8 uses finger followers to actuate the valve springs, rather than hydraulically actuated bucket-and-shim tappets, enabling higher-rpm performance. Unlike pretty much any engine we can think of, the V-8 eschews a metal torsional damper for a fluid-damping system. Wild stuff, and we presume this helps save weight.

Unlike many other hybrid hypercars, the W1 only sends power to the rear wheels, and it does so via a new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. And unlike the Artura, the W1 has its electric motor mounted to the side of the gearbox, operating downstream of the two clutches. It’s powered by a 1.4-kilowatt-hour battery and makes 342 hp and 324 lb-ft on its own. Combined, you get 1,258 hp and 988 lb-ft. 

The W1 has a very short all-electric range, but the electric motor always handles reversing. It also adds different levels of boost to the engine based on the drive mode. A boost button on the steering wheel allows the driver to deploy maximum power all at once. 

 Ok, so this isn’t crazy high-tech like other elements of the W1, but it is neat. The sun visors are made from carbon fiber, and are just 0.1 inches thick. They’re there to remind you of McLaren’s attention to saving weight. McLaren quotes a dry weight of 3,048 pounds, so figure with all the fluids necessary for driving, the W1 weighs somewhere around 3,300 pounds. Impressively light for a hybrid with this level of performance on tap. Far lighter than the weights of the likes of the Valkyrie and Mercedes-AMG One, and hardly heavier than a 750S… which has 500 fewer horsepower and a lot less downforce.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the W1, and we’re eager to hear more. After poring over the details, the W1 seems to take a lot of the best technology and thinking available today to move the hypercar game forward. It may “only” have a little over 300 hp more than a P1, but this should be a much quicker car. 

A decade ago, that would’ve been scarcely believable, and frankly, it’s hardly believable now.