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LaFerrari Loses Drag Race with Porsche 918 Spyder, McLaren P1, What Does This Mean?

Earlier this month, the holy hybrid hypercar trinity (HHHT) engaged in rather... unholy activities, with the LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder entering a customer car instrumented test for the first time.
LaFerrari vs McLaren P1 vs Porsche 918 Spyder drag race 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Until now, Maranello has succeeded in its attempts to prevent customer LaFerraris from being tested against the 918 and the P1 with a stopwatch included.

Supercar collector Paul Bailey has somehow managed to find a workaround, and since the man owns all three, his hybrids entered a three-episode series that sees them battling each other.

The series kicked off with the HHHT members battling it out on the Silverstone circuit and you can see the results here. For the second episode, which can be found below, the LaF, 918 and P1 remained on British soil, being taken to the Santa Pod Raceway drag strip.

The gasoline-electric hypercars engaged in a quarter mile shenanigan and (spoiler alert) the Prancing Horse lost. This is far from the first time when the Ferrari doesn’t get to spray its rivals with the post-race champagne, which is probably the reason why the Italians have tried to keep such tests from happening.

The Ferrari losing doesn’t mean much

While the McLaren is all about precision and the Porsche was built to tingle your inner helmet, the Ferrari is here to talk to your emotional side. This means its main focus is to be playful, not to sacrifice everything on the performance altar.

For one thing, you can grab a $70k Hellcat, fit drag radials to it, and with a good launch, you’d find yourself right in the middle of these three cars. So while the 1,302 feet times are important, they’re far from being everything.

Speaking of numbers, the times seen here are inferior to certain figures we’ve seen in previous tests, but we have to keep in mind these are private cars.

Filmed at Santa Pod on the afternoon of Friday 16th October. All three cars were tested in identical conditions, had all been driven to the venue and the drag strip was 100% dry for all runs. A jet powered track dryer was used before the cars had their single practice runs. Afterwards they had the chance to go head to head and set a fastest time, which is shown at the end of the video,” the organizers of the battle said.

Before any keyboard warrior starts firing conclusions, you should know the third test will see these monsters engaging in a three-way drag race to 186 mph (300 km/h).

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About the author: Andrei Tutu
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In his quest to bring you the most impressive automotive creations, Andrei relies on learning as a superpower. There's quite a bit of room in the garage that is this aficionado's heart, so factory-condition classics and widebody contraptions with turbos poking through the hood can peacefully coexist.
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