A sketchy ride in the McLaren F1 XP5 – Evo archive

I think there is no doubt about the largest group test there is evo has already assembled. It was issue 186 – the summer of 2013 – and the awesome seven that gathered in a North Wales parking lot were the F40, F50, Carrera GT, Noble M600, Murciélago LP670-4 SV, Zonda F and XP5. This was the analog supercars test.

In case you’re wondering, it’s arguably the most famous McLaren F1 in the world – the experimental prototype # 5, or precisely the car that Andy Wallace (in civilian clothes!) With. For our evo Group test 15 years later we had to insure him for what appeared to be a very reasonable £ 5 million, but the policy excess was still big enough to close the magazine for good and put us all out of work.

With this fact a little further ahead than in the back of my mind, at the end of the first day of testing I found myself on the legendary center seat. For obvious reasons, we had to park the F1 in a safe place overnight and drove across Snowdonia to get there. We had agreed to do the same with the F40 and Jethro Bovingdon was in front of me, struggling with his IHI turbos.

> Ferrari F40 – test report, history, prices and technical data

In front of the two of us was videographer Sam Riley in his long-time Skoda Superb Outdoor. Sam knows little fear in the best of times and used the four-wheel drive and the decent suspension travel of the large white station wagon surprisingly effectively. On wet, bumpy roads, with dry stone walls forming an unfriendly corridor, it was no easy task to keep up with the two icons. I knew Jethro needed a little more travel because I could sometimes see sparks as the Ferrari glided over the rougher patches of asphalt. Add to this the occasional flames from the triple exhausts with the glowing round lights above and it looked like the whole thing was fireworks going up in the air.

This cheerful appearance was reinforced by the twilight, which created its own problems in the cockpit of the F1. Reading the road through the light beams of twenty years of headlight technology is not easy in the best of times, but was made considerably more difficult by the two red LEDs that shine directly back on me from both sides like small demonic eyes. They were just floating on the edge of my view, incredibly bright and incredibly distracting. They only appeared when the headlights were on and I didn’t want to turn them off, so all I had to do was squint a little and follow the sound of the Ferrari (or what I could hear about it over the McLaren V12). I would have pulled back and tried to sort the problem out, but to be honest, I didn’t know where I was going and I’m not even sure if the insurance terms would allow us to park the car after dark …

Still no damage done. Unlike later – up to a certain blood pressure from Ron Dennis. You know, a few years later I heard that McLaren’s boss was the first to know about the loan of his precious XP5 to a couple of journalists when a month later a copy of issue 186 landed on his desk. I think he would just have been less pleased if we’d invited Max Mosley to guest editor on the issue.

As far as I know, our test remains the last time anyone outside of the McLaren XP5 has been allowed to drive on the road.