The T.50s will get its own race series, but won’t go to Le Mans

“It wants to be driven,” explains Gordon Murray of his T.50s, “and people deserve to hear it going around the circuit, too.”

That circuit won’t be Le Mans, however. Speaking to TopGear.com, Murray said he got excited when he first heard about the FIA and ACO’s original plans for a ‘supercar GT’ championship a couple of years ago. “That goes right back to the beginning of the McLaren F1, with the BPR series. That was a brilliant series,” he said.

“However, both the ACO and FIA don’t seem to know what they want to do, and they seem to be leaning back towards prototypes again, rather than GTs, which is slightly disappointing,” he added.

So Murray spoke to the boss of SRO, Stephane Ratel – “I think he runs more than 90 per cent of the world’s GT championships” – in order to develop his own series for the T.50s, as long as it meets FIA safety standards. “I haven’t bothered too much with the FIA regs,” he said. “The problem I had was that most of the GT regs start at 1,200kg, which means we’d have to put 300kg of steel into the thing.

“That’s not on, really. We’re not interested in the ‘hypercar’ class at Le Mans unless they make some big changes.”

Murray instead wants to cultivate a sort of ‘GT1 club’ for the T.50s. When asked about what clients wanted from his new racer, he said: “Some people have their own circuits – which is convenient – others rent out GP circuits a couple of times a year where their mates come round and have their track cars.

“But on top of that I’d like to organise some events for the people that don’t have access to that sort of circuit, and make sure people get the use out of the T.50s that it deserves. We’ll organise some serious events for people.”

It is a serious machine, after all. It costs £3.7m. The T.50’s special Cosworth V12 now kicks out 720bhp. It weighs just 890kg, and via that rear-fan (that’s always on) and huge delta-wing, generates a simply ludicrous 1,500kg of downforce. “It’s letting it off the leash,” he tells TG about the difference between T.50 road car and T.50s racer. “I’ve gone, ‘how wild can we go?’”

Very, as it turns out.