The Longtail is the ultimate evolution of McLaren’s Le Mans winning F1 GTR, but it also inspired the 675LT road car, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025.
Who better to provide insights on both cars than Chris Goodwin, an F1 GTR Longtail driver in 1997 and subsequently Chief Test Driver at McLaren Automotive between 1999 and 2017.
“The first time I drove a Longtail was at a test at Magny-Cours in February 1997,” recounts a now-retired (though still busy) Goodwin
Expectations for the 1997 season were high, given that McLaren had won on its Le Mans debut two years earlier. Things had changed since then, however. While the F1 GTR was a road-going supercar modified for the track, other manufacturers were producing specialised racing cars and converting them (in tiny numbers) for the road.
McLaren evolved the F1 GTR for 1996 in response, but bigger changes were needed for 1997. All-new bodywork was developed, including the longer rear spoiler, while the V12 was reduced to 6.0 litres and the road-car gearbox was replaced with a six-speed sequential unit. Ten Longtails were built, along with three road versions.
The new car was immediately fast. “We won first time out in British GT, and the car was just fantastic,’’ enthuses Goodwin. “I hadn’t driven the ’95 or ’96 cars back then but I have more recently, and the Longtail is a massive evolution. While you have to drive within the limit of the earlier GTRs and be more delicate, the Longtail encourages you to be more aggressive, so you can brake deeper and overdrive it immediately. Naturally, that leads to a faster lap time.”
The Longtail went on to win five rounds of the FIA GT championship, but 1997 really built to a climax at Le Mans, where six F1 GTRs were entered. Goodwin and team-mates John Nielsen and Thomas Bscher showed winning pace until a pre-race fire scuppered their potential. When a second team car retired in the closing stages, it seemed fate was conspiring against McLaren that year. Thankfully, the third Gulf Team Davidoff car – Number 41 of Anders Olofsson, Pierre-Henri Raphanel and Jean-Marc Gounon – finished first in class and second overall. Another McLaren, entered by BMW Motorsport, came home third.
McLaren subsequently stopped developing the Longtail, while Goodwin went on to work as Chief Test Driver for McLaren’s road cars, helping to develop the 675LT.
Unveiled in March 2015, the 675LT took the acclaimed McLaren 650S and made it lighter, faster and sharper. “We actually took a very similar path to get from 650S to 675LT as from F1 GTR to the Longtail,” Goodwin reveals. “We changed the suspension, made the steering more reactive, retuned the aero and made the powertrain more aggressive. The original Longtail became much more of a racing car, and the 675LT became much more of a track-focused road car.”
That focus was conjured up again in the 600LT and 765LT of 2018 and 2020 respectively – cars that had a huge impact, not just on the LT story but on the wider McLaren brand. Pushed to develop more extreme supercars, the LT engineers unlocked new ways of doing things – new solutions that could be applied to the whole range. The front suspension of the 600LT, for example, informed the suspension of the Artura; and the lessons learned in the 765LT were later applied to the 750S, creating a “best of both worlds” supercar – lighter, more powerful and more connected but also useable every day. The purposeful purity of the brand new W1 is also the embodiment of that focused, racing-led approach.
It may have only raced for one full season, but the legacy of the legendary F1 GTR Longtail has been long-lasting indeed.
