McLaren P1 back at the Nurburgring in attack mode

It seems McLaren is back at the Nurburgring with the prototype P1 in an attempt to take the track record from the Porsche 918.

The McLaren P1 is back at the Nurburgring looking to set a new record

It was brave of Ron Dennis to declare – before the McLaren P1 was anywhere close to finished – that the it would be able to lap the Nurburgring in under 7 minutes.

He was obviously very confident his new baby was up to the task but, just like McLaren’s current Formula One car, the P1 seems to be just a bit off the pace.

Last month we reported that it seemed the best the McLaren P1 could do at the Nurburgring was a 7:04s – a time McLaren didn’t make official – so we knew McLaren would be back with their laptops and engineers as soon as they’d figured a way to trim those last few seconds.

That mission was give extra impetus by the news – just days after McLaren failed to beat 7 minutes – that the Porsche 918 Spyder had set a lap time of 6:57s – the quickest ever for a full production car – despite having less power and weighing more.

Now it seems McLaren are back at the Nurburging with the P1 and, according to Car magazine, with the P1 in full attack mode with all the tweaks McLaren can muster, it’s rear wing up as far as it will go and its suspension stiffened and dropped – full Race Mode.

Behind the wheel is McLaren’s Chief Test Driver, Chris Goodwin, there’s a full pit support crew to ensure anything that needs tweaking can be tweaked and Pirelli has shod the P1 with its slickest, stickiest road-legal tyres.

We can probably assume that if we don’t get a new record announced in the next week that McLaren has failed to push the P1 faster than the 918 Spyder.