Drifting
Mad Mike unleashes his new MADMAC McLaren P1 at Goodwood Festival of Speed
Kiwi drifting legend Mad Mike Whiddett unleashed his latest creation – a drifting McLaren P1 hypercar he's named MADMAC .
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While Oracle Red Bull Racing were revealing the world’s most advanced track car, the RB17, Goodwood Festival of Speed legend 'Mad' Mike Whiddett was lifting the lid on a hypercar of his own: the crazy MADMAC drifting McLaren P1.
Wrestling the car spectacularly through the wet and getting all four tyres smoking in the dry, the MADMAC thrilled the thousands of fans gathered at the world's biggest festival of motorsport. A decade ago, the New Zealander unleashed drifting on an unsuspecting Goodwood crowd, making himself one of the festival's biggest stars overnight.
MADMAC is a venture with Lanzante, the specialist motorsport company that won the Le Mans 24Hr in 1995 with a McLaren F1, and U.S. luxury car specialist O'Gara Coach Company. Constructed in his MADLAB workshop in Hampton Downs, New Zealand, the MADMAC is also Mad Mike's tribute to F1 race winner, Le Mans champion, team founder and fellow Aucklander Bruce McLaren, who was killed racing at Goodwood.
Mad Mike Whiddett drifting his MADMAC at Goodwood Festival of Speed 2024
© Eisa Bakos/Red Bull Content Pool
Like Mad Mike's NIMBUL, his drifting Lamborghini Huracan, the idea started at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. "He visited our stand, saw what we had on display and we started to explore what was possible," said Dean Lanzante. The conversation turned to Mad Mike's dream drift car and he came up with a custom mix of a McLaren P1 GTR and a McLaren GT3 650s. "We like to think that we build some of the most extreme cars," adds Lanzante. "But Mike saw this as a challenge to take things up a level or two."
Being a proud Kiwi, I'm inspired to push this McLaren project to the absolute limit and then take it around the world… sideways
To make life even harder, Mad Mike and his co-conspirator, mechanic Alec Bell, only had 100 days to convert the custom McLaren – a car designed to go very fast in a straight line – into a snarling, sideways-racing drift car.
"This is my craziest challenge to date, turning a custom Lanzante-built McLaren P1 GTR into the world's wildest drift hypercar - in only 100 days," said Mad Mike. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be cutting into a multi-million dollar McLaren with no rules and then unveiling it at one of my favourite events on earth – the Goodwood Festival of Speed."
While McLaren purists might want to look away, while adapting and replacing the MADMAC's steering and brakes, Mad Mike also discarded the 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 McLaren engine and replaced it with a 1,000hp, two-litre, triple rotor, turbo-charged rotary engine. Rotary power is huge in drifting and Mad Mike is its biggest advocate, as the high-revving engines give him 1,000hp beneath his right foot and helps him to make more revs, more gear-changes and more spinning tyres to delight the crowds.
Goodwood was the only place Mad Mike could debut his new drifting weapon
© Eisa Bakos/Red Bull Content Pool
The results are spectacular and Mad Mike switched on the crowd with a series of fire-breathing, tyre chomping runs up the famous Goodwood Festival of Speed hill climb. Another chapter written in burning rubber in the legend of 'Mad' Mike Whiddett.
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