As we've touched on in the past, McLaren, Mercedes-AMG, and Aston Martin are in the middle of an all-out war for hypercar supremacy between their fire-breathing Senna, Project One, and Valkyrie. Each claiming that they're the fastest road car on the planet.
They're exciting times for lovers of the best of the best — made more exciting by our (to date unconfirmed ...) understanding that at least one of each car will come to pokey little New Zealand.
It's the Senna that seems to carry the most hype, following on from the success of its P1 and 720S cousins. Some may frown at its insane aerodynamics, but there's little doubt that it's a rapid package. The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 conjures 588kW and 800Nm, and it's bolted to a package with a total dry weight of 1198kg with 800kg of down-force potential from all those wings and fins.
"You cannot follow a single line from the front to the rear without it passing through a functional air intake or vent," said McLaren on release. Entirely believable, too.
Marketing for the British hypercar with the Kiwi badge has started to ramp up, with this latest video one drop in the ocean of surge. Here, former Formula 1 driver Bruno Senna gives his glimmering impressions of the car to a montage of it clinging onto a series of corners for dear life.
"You can only believe how much grip it has at high-speed when you attack the corners fast, but then you come to low-speed [corners] and the car feels so nimble," he says.
In many ways, the comments echo those made about the 570S and 720S — two cars lauded for their versatility and ability to bend expectations for their respective classes. The new Senna also sounds a lot like its brethren in the clip; the flat-plane crank V8 clearly more focused on efficiency than on bombastic noise (a point some like and some will surely dislike).
Bruno Senna of course is more than just the nephew of Ayrton Senna and an F1 driver with just a handful of points-scoring finishes to his name. Since his last F1 season in 2012, he's competed with success in Formula E and the World Endurance Championship.
And more important in regards to his context here, he's also one of McLaren's development drivers. Having worked with them for three years now, he's overseen the aforementioned 570S and 720S, both considered to be successful cars.
And with all 500 Sennas McLaren are producing sold out, perhaps it too can already be considered a success ... Until its Mercedes-AMG and Aston Martin rivals hit showrooms, anyways.