Prepare your ears for a McLaren F1 GTR Longtail on track

Calling all cynics who fear that legendary four-wheel unobtanium like the McLaren F1 will be locked in museums and climate-controlled underground garages for evermore. This is your chance to see and hear a bona fide race-winning F1 doing the business.

The catch is that you need to be near to or preferably at the Sonoma Raceway in California this weekend, for the Sonoma Speed Festival. If you want to see F1 chassis no.027R in action, best get yourself Stateside stat.

Excitedly, the organisers of the event tell us “this was the first GTR Longtail to win a race, claiming victory at the 1997 British GT Championship race at Silverstone before strong showings at Circuit de Spa-Francochamps and the Nürburgring later that year.

“Now, over 20 years after chassis 27R delivered the first victory for the F1 GTR Longtail, this iconic machine returns to the track in its stunning original Parabolica livery for demonstration passes twice on Saturday June 1 and Sunday June 2 at Sonoma Speed Festival.”

Joining the Longtail will be a McLaren P1, in one of the rare occasions when Woking’s 916bhp hybrid hypercar will be thoroughly overshadowed.