The Woking-based McLaren seems in a pretty good space right now. It’s 2021 F1 car, the MCL35M looked very planted and reliable across the 3 days of pre-season held in Bahrain 12 days ago and looks like a real competitor for the top honours of the midfield. On the other side, McLaren takes its 720S GT3, initiates scenario 7 ( if you know what we mean, you Lando fanboys ) and gives it an even more sporty makeover and ta-da, the McLaren 720S GT3X, a track-focused beast that even looks like one as long as we are on the subject.
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The McLaren 720S GT3X is a work of art and is an obvious confluence of the brilliant minds at Woking. Interestingly enough, in the last 7 days alone, we have come across 3 new supremely resplendent track-specific launches – the Shelby Super Snake, the Pagani Huayra R and now, the McLaren 720S GT3X.
Upfront, it features the signature McLaren headlights and DRLs. The 720S features some very erudite aerodynamic bits. Every part of this car would certainly have been carefully and thoughtfully worked on. The rear features a massive wing along with a mega diffuser. Look at the size of those plates. The only way you can better that is by blowing exhaust over it bringing back the glimpses of the blown diffuser era of F1 and especially, those brutal downshifts.
As it is a track-specific car, the interior has been stripped off a few of its regular goodies and now features a roll-cage as standard. The chassis is the same MonoCage II carbon-fibre tub as used by the standard 720S and GT3 racer, but the 720S GT3X is a different machine altogether.
That said, it is still powered by the same 4.0L twin-turbo V8 that produces 710BHP ( or 720 PS ) of peak power which is similar to what the standard 720S puts out but way more than what the GT3 delivers. There’s also a push-to-pass button that adds an extra 28bhp on-demand, taking its total output to 738bhp briefly. The brakes have been upgraded and the cooling system has also been revised to handle all that grunt.
Official statement
“We’ve already got a very good GT3-based car,” said Ian Morgan, Director of Motorsport McLaren Automotive. “We wanted to make it faster, so there is more power, more acceleration, better braking and overall lap times considerably faster than the GT3.”