The final two were almost a tie, but I'll go with the order of when they were manufacturered. The car in the back-right corner of the image is an example of the 1997-spec longtail F1 GTR; in this case GTR #20R wearing it's 'Gulf-Davidoff' livery from the 1997 24Hrs of LeMans. The 1997 GTRs were obviously a large departure from the earlier racers, but were not a total clean sheet design. While the longtail bodywork doesn't strike everyone's fancy, it does serve a purpose in allowing the F1 GTR to hold its own against the increased competition from Porsche's 911 GT1 and Mercedes Benz' CLK-GTR and other purpose-built race cars that were beginning to steal pieces of the F1s glory and earlier domination in the sportscar racing series of the day. It also elicited this comment from Gordon Murray: "The first time I saw the '97 'Longtail' prototype accelerating past the pits at Barcelona - slightly nose up - with that wonderful, rising, piercing V12 shriek, I finally thought 'That's it - we've cracked it. We've finally turned the F1 into a real racer.'" Not only was the car longer and more aerodynamic, but it was surprisingly considerably lighter than the more road-car based GTRs of the earlier two years (published weights for the three versions went from 1050kg, to 1012kg, to finally 915kg on the longtails).
The V12 engines fitted to GTRs were all dubbed "S70/3" even though each revision had seen steady performance improvements from BMW over the years. Despite that work, all of them were rated at 600hp. Because of the size of the F1s V12, they were handicapped from the get-go with air-restrictors due to sanctioning rules that reduced the power to less than that of a road car. In the case of the 1997 variant, displacement actually was reduced to 5990cc from the tradition 6064cc of all other F1 engines by shortening the stroke slightly, getting it under the 6.0L bar. I believe this was to allow a slightly larger air inlet than it would have gotten being over than mark, and changed mapping to the ignition and fuel curves and other internals for increased performance where it matter. The smaller engine suffered a bit losing 21lb-ft of torque at its peak though, but BMW had also made significant weight reductions in the engine to counter act that in what was probably a delicate balancing act of weight -vs- performance.
Another big change to the longtail GTRs was the fitment of a sequential gearbox, developed by Xtrac, which improved shifting and helped with reliability of the F1s transmission that had always been a bit of an Achilles' heel in the longer racing events. The longtails were nearly successful in their quest to beat their improved rivals - one of them finishing second overall to a CLK-GTR in the 1997 FIA GT Championship series, and one taking the top honors in the GT1 Class at the '97 24Hrs of LeMans. In total, I think I have mentioned already that 10 of these were built, finishing the GTRs chassis number run at #28R.
Now the last car in that image of six was built by McLaren to satisfy the homologation requirements of the FIA GT series. Since the longtail GTR was such a departure from the regular F1, a requirement in the rules stated that in order to race this new car they had to build a new road car that matched, sell one a month before the first race, have dealers, brochures and parts back-up for it. This very special variant is called the F1 GT, and commonly referred to as the longtail road car.
The one pictured and in the second shot way up there with the other road cars might appear to be black, but I can assure you it is dark green, making it chassis 56XPGT. That was essentially the prototype for the F1 GT, and then two additional customer cars were built, one of them went to McLaren's best customer the Brunei Royal Family and was in fact black. The other went to Japan and was painted Burgundy originally, but was recently in the past couple of years refitted by the factory for its original owner with a paint scheme resembling the McLaren Formula One cars from the Mika Hakkinen era. I'm sure there will be a point later on where sharing photos of it will occur either by me or someone else.
The styling of the GT is again an acquired taste. Some openly do not like it at all, whereas others find it to be their favorite of all. I think the longtails look better as racers, but understand and appreciate why the GTs were made and with only three built, it was definitely the most exclusive of the original F1 variants.
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Since production of the F1s ceased in mid-1998, the McLaren Customer Care group that continues to support and maintain F1s has managed to come up with a few new psuedo-variants based on customer's requests. These deserve to be mentioned, mainly because seeing one can confuse people as to which of the six categories above they fall into.
For starters, McLaren developed an option for the F1 road car called the 'High Downforce Kit' that included the deep nose splitter, wider front wheel arches and rear wing, matching the aerodynamic styling elements fitted to the short tailed F1 GTRs and the LM. Also, except with one particular F1 that didn't get the wider front wheel arches, they also changed the wheels from the standard 17" to wear a set of the 18" OZ included on the GTRs.
There were other changes that aren't as obivious that go along with this, like the deletion of the 'Brake Balance Foil' at the rear, and lowering/stiffening of the suspension slightly in order to make it all work best together. I am aware of 10 F1s that have been upgraded with this option - all but one of the chassis numbers are known. It should also be noted that no F1 road car was originally completed with the High Downforce Kit fitted - they were
all added later on during refits.
One owner recently chose to have the Kit removed, returning the car to stock, which is pretty surprising.
Now of those 10... (errr, 9 now) two of the cars are even more heavily modified by McLaren to really become the ultimate variant of the F1. They feature the addition of an LM-spec engine, giving them near equal performance to the fastest F1 variant without some of the drawbacks of the LMs raw and sparsely finished interior, or any lack of creature comforts. Unlike the LMs, they do not have the straight cut gearboxes borrowed from the GTR that make communication inside the car nearly impossible at speed. The Downforce Kit on these cars was enhanced with louvers over the front wheel arches in the style used on the longtails to improve downforce, and McLaren called it the "Extra-High Downforce Kit" because of that.
Now these two cars don't have a fancy name like "F1 GT" and they should never simply be called "F1 LMs" since they are not the same. McLaren spent a lot of time on these two conversions and certainly could have fitted an "F1 LM" badge to the rear of each, but chose not too. Here's a photo of each car - #018 first, #073 second. Now, after all that, I must ask that you please ignore the platform underneath #073 where it says "McLaren F1 LM". :lol:
The final new variant that should be mentioned are the road-converted F1 GTRs. These confuse people for different reasons - but the primary one is because many of them have been resprayed in Historic 'Papaya' Orange making them instantly look like an F1 LM to the slightly-informed car enthusiast.
There are a total of 9 GTRs that have been converted. Some by the factory, others by private firms. They are all based on short tailed '95 or '96 GTRs. It has been said that converting a '97 GTR would be impossible, but I guess that depends on what set of regulatory standards you are trying to comply with as some are less stringent than others for road registration.
The chassis numbers of the converted GTRs are #06R, #07R, #08R, #10R, #11R, #12R, #13R, #14R and #16R. From that listing, the ones that are not 'Orange' (as it is a shorter list) are #06R, #10R, #12R and #13R. In each case for those four, they still wear what would be described as their original race livery, sans most sponsor decals and race numbers. GTR #16R has recently changed hands and there have been suggestions that it will possibly see a return to its original livery as well, or maybe something else. We'll have to wait and see what its new owner decides.
That covers what could be considered all the variants in a moderate level of detail. If you want further clarification on any points, just ask.
>8^)
ER