Stepping up

The gearbox is actually a hybrid of those found in three different McLarens. The standard Artura ’box is no good because it has no reverse gear (that’s achieved by rotating the electric motor backwards), so instead of having eight forward ratios, it has the seven from the 570S plus one reverse, running through the lowest final drive McLaren has, which is from the 765LT. There’s a mechanical limited-slip diff common to none of the above, too. Such is the drag of the bewinged body that even amid the wide open spaces of Silverstone the car rarely does much more than 150mph, making the seventh ratio entirely redundant. Indeed it was only while bored on an in lap that I bothered to find out if it was there.

So I go out and do a few laps. Next to me is McLaren works racing driver (and one time Jenson Button GT3 co-driver) Michael O’Brien. He’s meant to be talking me round the lap through our intercom, but the system isn’t loud enough so he’s effectively ballast for the duration; even so knowing someone is there off to your right scrutinising your every move is very much a double-edged sword, like having teacher checking your calculations over your shoulder during a maths exam.

And really none of it really feels quite right anyway. The car is easy enough to drive and forgiving too, as I found when travelling unexpectedly sideways having pushed too hard too soon before the used Pirelli slicks were up to their proper operating temperature. But I’m still driving in a mechanical, almost robotic way. Straight, gears, brakes, turn, off brakes, power, open wheel, exit. Driving by numbers. I’m already sweating and expect Michael to have plenty to say when I can finally hear him.

I do eight laps of the full GP circuit, then pit, waiting for the headmaster’s report. And it could have been worse. It could also have been a lot better. ‘You’re fine in the quick stuff,’ he observes, ‘really nothing to say about that at all. But the slow corners…’ I have been here before. Back at Spa I had precisely the same problem and it took none other than Bruno to explain to me why slow corners matter most. Not only does your exit speed therefrom determine your speed all along the straight that follows, but because you spend so much time slowing for, turning into and getting away from slow corners, you spend far more time in them than you do in fast corners.

So you can have balls the size of Bournemouth in the quick ones and your lap time will still be lousy if you fail to execute properly in the slow stuff. My particular problems included, but were not limited to: braking both too hard and too late, yet still failing to use the brakes effectively to the steer the car into the apex, making an insufficient ‘V’ shape of my approach and departure, not turning the wheel enough at the apex and stressing the rear tyres by being too impatient to get back on the power before they were ready to take it.

I felt glum, and that’s before I heard someone titter at my vain attempt to exit the machine with some semblance of dignity.

Something else. I’ve been doing this for long enough to know how my brain deals with such situations. Essentially it’s spent the last 20 minutes struggling, and failing, to process the avalanche of data it’s being fed. Its response is to switch into a kind of ‘essentials only’ mode, where it deals with what’s important – keeping me alive – and leaving everything else to pile up outside the door. It’s why I’m driving mechanically with little or no fluency, and it’s why I can’t hear Michael shouting at me from the passenger seat. Only once the moment has passed can it start to address the backlog. The process takes about 30 minutes.

Next time out, this time alone, the Artura feels like a different car. But it’s not, it’s just got a different driver: I’m no longer thinking about me and my ability to do this job, I’m thinking about the car. And, at last, doing my job.

Eight laps later I’m back in the pits, grinning, wanting to talk set up. We discuss what can be adjusted and it’s not much: wing angle, spring rates, roll bar settings, tyre pressures – that sort of thing. Were this a GT3 car you could change every major aspect of the suspension geometry at each corner – toe, camber and castor – but then a 720S GT3 is a half million pound machine requiring a budget of a million or more to run for a season. The Artura Trophy Evo costs half the price of a GT3 to buy, and the same again to run. So over a season including purchase it’s approximately one third the price of its big brother – a £1m saving for a car not far at all off the pace of the slower GT3 runners.

And although I’ve not driven McLaren’s current GT3 contender, I’ve tried plenty of others and prefer the way the Artura drives to modern GT3 machinery. Downforce is a serious consideration and a genuine factor in how you approach the car, but it doesn’t dominate. Driving the Artura is a less binary experience, so not just about braking as hard as possible into the apex then swapping pedals and accelerating away as fast as you can. You feel less of a passenger being shown a highly impressive demonstration of the laws of physics, and more of a driver, with a greater influence on outcomes. The Artura feels glorious through really quick corners like turn one and Copse, but is not so bolted to the planet that you can’t trim your line a little with the throttle. And I love that – to me it is the very essence of driving. Those brought up in high downforce environment don’t know what they’re missing.

My sessions are complete so believing I’m done, I head off to hospitality for a well-earned lunch before having to take a Zoom call in the Ford Focus that’s carried me here. But as I go back in to change and say my farewells, I’m told a small present is waiting for me, but that I have to be in the car to receive it.

So in I struggle again just in time to feel the car hoist aloft on its air jacks and see a shiny set of spanking new slicks wheeled out of the pits. I was quite enjoying hoofing the car around on its tired old rubber, but this was an opportunity far too good to miss. I spend two laps carefully bringing them up to temperature – if you’ve not driven on them, brand new unheated slicks have all the adhesive qualities of soapy cardboard – and let rip.

You pass the pits in fifth gear but if your exit from the last turn was good, you just have time to grab sixth before turn one arcs right. Brush the brakes, shift to fifth and angle into the curve at a speed I don’t really want to think about. Get it right and the left after is taken just about flat. Then lose over half your speed and two more gears, making sure to bleed off brake pressure as the downforce dissipates, always looking at the apex you’re trying to hit. This and the even slower left to come is where I’ve been losing all my time so I try to stay focussed, and patient. Very, very patient. Surprisingly the slight inherent understeer exhibited on the old tyres is more pronounced on fresh rubber. It’s only in the slow corners so I think softening the front roll bar might work wonders, but am reminded that this is a 2025 car, fresh out of the box and still has plenty of development work to come before it’s race ready.

Slow turns behind me, there’s a quick left – easily flat on new rubber, marginal on old – before you’re back up to sixth down the Wellington Straight and into the Luffield complex. Fourth through the left at Brooklands, third for Luffield itself, more patience, then foot flat and thumb the P2P button long before the car is straight. You have to be sure your hoof is all the way down first because the extra power is only available on full throttle and if you lift so much as a millimetre the system deactivates.

And now the real fun begins. The old Woodcote kink is a mere acceleration zone and you’re in sixth under the bridge before Copse. Knock it back to fifth and turn into one of the best corners in racing. There are options everywhere but I like to keep it clean and just run the outside tyres a little over the white line at the exit. Back to sixth and keep it there as you turn into the left that starts the Becketts complex, the most fun series of corners I know, at least in a car with serious grip.

You’re still in sixth on the left-hand rumble strip which is also the turn in point for the right to come. You don’t so much turn it in as fire it at the right at impossible speed, just trusting that the brakes and a downshift will shed enough speed to ensure that, so long as you’re as greedy as you can possibly be with the kerb, the car will be on line for the next left. It is utterly thrilling. Then it’s fourth through the left, the right and then remember to push the extra power button long before you’re near the apex of the flat left that heads onto the old Hangar Straight. Stowe is gorgeous, taken at the top end of fourth with the car in full flight, before going up to fifth and down to third for the fiddly chicane at Vale leading into Club for another lap.

By now I had the ABS and traction control wound over two thirds of the way back to base and was having a ball. A car in which I feared I might make a fool of myself only hours earlier was now something I felt I’d known all my life. Now there was no fear, only exhilaration. Give me an entire field of ’em and I’d fancy my chances of a bit more silverware…

Which is exactly the moment you need to give the car back, thank the team for trusting you with it and beat a hasty retreat, which is precisely what I did.

Driving home, beyond the relief of discovering I’ve not forgotten how to drive racing cars fast, I thought of the car and its intended purpose. It will make a great one-make racer for gentlefolk drivers: it’s fast enough to earn and require your undivided attention, yet reassuring, tolerant of mistakes and rides the kerbs like a limousine. Those who race them next year in two series, one in Europe, the other in North America and at some of the best tracks both continents have to offer, are going to have a fine old time.

But there’s part of me that thinks it was born for better things even than this. Because the more time I spent in it, the more I wanted to spend in it. Not just a few laps over a few stints, but a few hours over a race of many hours. To me a sports car with over 600bhp, balanced by exactly the right amount of mechanical and aerodynamic grip – neither too little or too much – would make the perfect long distance racer, particularly if it were as comfortable and user-friendly as this.

I last did a 24-hour race in 2015, but if someone were to offer me a seat in one of these for a race of similar duration now, purely for the fun of it, I’d be there in an instant. Funny to think that only earlier that day, I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive it at all…