When Gordon Murray set out to design the McLaren F1, he made it clear to McLaren boss Ron Denis that he intended to make the ultimate road car. He told his employers that they should not come back to him in a couple of years and ask him to make the F1 into a race car, as it would be forever compromised by it's road car design. By this, he meant that it's suspension would be difficult to set up due to it's street car design which had to allow comfort as well as stiffness. The bodywork too, would not be ideal for racing, as the cabin would be too wide to allow good airflow past it to the rear wing, and the tail would be too short to allow sufficient downforce under race conditions.
Despite this, when a manufacturer produces the fastest road car in the world, somebody will want to race it. As it happened, the mid-1990's was a time of change in the sports car racing world. Manufacturers were not very interested in highly specialized sports prototypes anymore and a move to make the race cars more production model based was on. This culminated in the formation of the GT1 and 2 categories, of which Ron Denis decided to offer factory support to privateers competing in GT1. The result was the F1 GTR, which was essentially the same as the road car, except for a large rear wing and some minor bodywork changes. It had a phenomenally successful debut, winning the 1995 LeMans race and the GT1 championship for 1995.
In 1996, Porsche upset the GT1 applecart by building the 911 GT1. This car was designed first as a race car then adapted to make it road legal (in order to satisfy regulations). McLaren and others felt that this was not in keeping with the spirit of the regulations, but nonetheless decided to modify the original F1 design to turn it into more of a purpose built racer. New bodywork with an extended "long tail", which increased rear downforce (by allowing the rear wing to be moved further behind the rear axle line) and a longer nose were introduced. A specialized racing gearbox was added and three road cars were built and sold to satisfy GT1 regulations.
The new variant of the F1 GTR made it's debut in the 1997 season and enjoyed moderate success, a high point being 2nd place in that years LeMans race, and first in the GT1 class overall.
This model is by UT models and is one of their range of McLaren F1's that are now unfortunately hard to find as UT stopped making them in 2000 after being taken over by AUTOarts parent company Gateway Global. It represents the car that finished 2nd at LeMans in 1997 and is finished in the blue colours of Gulf Team Davidoff, driven by Raphanel, Gounon and Olofsson. Overall it looks good but lacks such niceties as detailed brakes, fine engine and interior detail and realistic looking lights. The decals are poorly applied in places too, especially at the rear where UT instead of just filling in the rear ducts (that I presume were not a feature on this particular 1:1 McLaren) covered them over with a paint coloured decal which has now cracked and looks terrible! It would be great if AUTOart were to update and re-release this model as they have done with other UT molds, but unfortunately due to the fact that McLaren is now closely associated with Mercedes-Benz (BMWs great rival), BMW don't wish to license the F1 model anymore.
