New McLaren supercar will get slidey goodness

Fresh off the back of announcing a new chassis and new engine projects, McLaren’s also released details of its new active suspension system.

It’s called ‘McLaren Proactive Chassis Control II’, and will, in practice, likely be quite a bit like the Side Slip Control on offer in the Ferrari 488 GTB (but we wouldn’t mention that to anyone at McLaren). The system will appear on the new McLaren 650S replacement, and therefore a direct 488 rival.

So what exactly does it do? Well, a Fantasia-like number of sensors read just about everything that’s going on around the car, from the tyre speed, throttle position, steering wheel position, yaw angle and things only Adrian Newey could explain.

Then, the new Super Series McLaren’s brain will adjust the level of damping in the active suspension for peak traction and poise, even when you're switched to ‘Race’.

Thankfully, this isn’t nerdishness at the expense of fun, rather a kind of super-technical glee. Case in point: there’ll be a feature called ‘Variable Drift Control’, which looks to be as good as it sounds in the teaser image of. Suffice to say that you’ll be able to dial in exactly how much traction control you want via a slider on a touchscreen.

That way, you’ll be able to get properly sideways in a thoroughly un-McLaren way, without binning it into the hedge shortly thereafter. Probably, anyway.

So, what do you think? Are you aboard the hype train yet, or will you reserve judgement until the new Super Series model - replacing the 650S - makes its debut at the Geneva motor show in March?