Are you curious whether a road car is quicker than a race car in a drag race? Well, regardless of what you answered, we wanted to find out!
We wheeled out one of the craziest hypercars – the McLaren P1 – and put it up against the race car version of itself, the McLaren P1 GTR, to figure out which was quickest.
The P1 then goes up against the all-electric Korean missile: the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N.
Thanks again to Hyundai for helping cover the cost of putting this series together – it’s MEGA expensive to do, so without support it wouldn’t have happened, you can read more about that here.
The cars
I remember when the holy trinity was released. It was the McLaren P1, the Porsche 918 Spyder and the Ferrari LaFerrari – all insane cars in their own right.
We managed to get our hands on one of the three – a McLaren P1.
The P1 is a beast in all regards: 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V8 petrol engine, electric motor, 674kW of power, 900Nm of torque, and limited to just 375 units globally. McLaren claims it was the world’s first hybrid supercar.
Officially, McLaren says it’ll do 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds and 0-200km/h in 6.8 seconds.
If you already own a McLaren P1, the door is then opened to ownership of the even more limited P1 GTR. This P1 GTR is also for sale! So if you’re interested, get in touch with the LEE Collection.
With a price tag of over US$3 million when new, the P1 GTR manages to extract an extra 46kW from the internal combustion engine and an additional 15kW from the electric motor.
The race version weighs just 1440kg – around 50kg lighter than a regular P1.
The attainable challenger
Priced from $111,000 before on-road costs, the fully electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 N uses a dual-motor all-wheel drive electric powertrain producing 448kW of power and 740Nm of torque.
Those outputs increase to 478kW and 770Nm with the N Grin Boost function – which can be mated to the launch control function as well. It has a claimed 0-100km/h time of 3.4 seconds with N Grin Boost active.
It also has a bunch of other functions like the ability to destroy tyres, make engine sounds, and even pulse fictional gear shifts to make it feel like an internal-combustion car with a DCT.
The results
This was honestly the craziest drag race we’ve done to date. These cars were both super sketchy off the line and across the quarter mile. Traction was limited and it wasn’t until tyres were warm that we could properly access the power.
The scrabbly surface also made it hard to log some proper times, but we gave it a crack anyway!
| Vehicle | 0-100kmh | 80-120km/h | 0-200km/h | 1/4 mile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| McLaren P1 | 3.94s | 1.84s | 10.98s | 11.46s @ 205.35km/h |
| McLaren P1 GTR | 3.99s | 1.48s | 8.30s | 10.65s @ 239.97km/h |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 N | 3.52s | 1.86s | – | 11.32s @ 195.92km/h |
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