The First Person Outside of McLaren to Drive the P1 is Jay Leno

News

“Well, the 12C is the wife’s car now.”

Yesterday, we received word that McLaren’s P1 hypercar may have put in a pretty amazing lap time around a big race track in Germany, and today a video has surfaced of steam-powered car enthusiast and part time late night talk show host Jay Leno taking the P1 out for a spin. Leno also happens to be the first person that doesn’t work for McLaren to drive the P1.

After a tour of the McLaren factory and the P1 assembly line, Leno is flown to Dunsfold (which also happens to be where Top Gear is filmed) where Chris Goodwin and a tangerine orange P1 await. “Wow,” says Leno, “glad I ordered it in this color. This is a great color.” Jay, if you’re reading this, can we be friends?

As you would expect, the P1 is flipping rapid. Goodwin takes Leno through the different performance settings, including electric only, which Leno gets bored with after about 30 seconds. Next comes race mode. The difference you can see and hear when it’s put into race mode is amazing. The engine note gets louder and harder. The stiffer suspension causes the camera (and Leno’s chin) to shake more. The turbo’s bypass valves chirp away after throttle lift off.

As a side note, I’ve really come to enjoy these Jay Leno’s Garage videos. He’s obviously incredibly knowledgable, he’s fanatical about cars in the best possible way, has more than enough money to indulge his passion and is cool enough to share it all on the internet. Hopefully he keeps it up after his retirement from television next year.