126 MH.CO.ZA/ August 2019the mangled McLaren, its bright-orange body
barely visible through the thick shrubbery.
One dihedral door was still up, waving at me:
Hi there. Glad I was able to protect you.“ THERE’S A ONE-PIECE carbon-fibre
safety cell under here,” a McLaren
engineer said later that evening at Pebble
Beach, rapping the side of a 600LT, the
newest model to emerge fromWoking.
“This MonoCell is virtually bombproof.
You’ll survive just about anything in a
McLaren.” I glanced at my only injuries: a
nick on my hand, from a thorn bush when
I was climbing up the mountain, and the
already-scabbing scrapes on my shins
from the knee airbags that had shielded
my legs. I wasn’t even sore, contrary to the
paramedics’ prediction.
Credit McLaren’s multi-championship
Formula One team for the pioneering
invention. Racing cars are designed to
go fast and protect the driver. A decade
after founder Bruce McLaren perished
while testing one of his racing cars, a
carbon-cell “tub” was created for the 1981
MP4-1 F1 car. Rival teams pilloried the
idea, believing it to be unsafe and their
all-aluminum chassis to be superior. After
McLaren driver John Watson walked away
from a horrific fireball crash that split his
car in two at Monza, every Formula One
car eventually had a carbon cell installed.
When McLaren’s iconic three-seat F1 road
car debuted in 1992, engineers included a
carbon tub. McLaren employs a carbon tub
as standard in every single car it produces- the only car manufacturer to do so.
“We need the carbon fibre’s strength
to protect our occupants,” Charles
Wildig, head of design execution for
McLaren, offered in a charming British
accent. “Especially, for example, when
enthusiasm overcomes adhesion and a
high-energy crash results.”
To create the tub for all McLaren’s
vehicles, dry sheets of carbon fibre as thin
as two pieces of paper are placed into a tool
mould, and resin is injected in under high
pressure. After the mixture is compressed
and baked, you have a tub that can withstand
more than 50 tons of force in a front crash.
“That’s the equivalent of turning the tub on
its end and stacking four London buses on
top. It won’t break,” Wildig said. McLaren
declined to comment on the price, but
WE HAD TRAVELLED 70 metres out from
where the 570’s now-mangled tyres last
touched asphalt, and some 20m down the
mountain. That’s about the length of a
cricket pitch – vertically. Although we’d
got up to 170km/hr, we left the road at
110, flying over two metal drainage pipes,
each the diameter of a manhole cover,
and missing most of the bigger trees.
The car was largely intact, though a wide
debris field dotted the steep and loamy
mountainside. My jersey, stored in the
now-demolished frunk (boot in front), was
located some 25m back up the car’s flight
path. My phone was never found.
It took several minutes to catch my
breath after clambering up the 50-degree
slope to the top of the hill. The shock
dissipated, and after talking to the US
equivalent of a traffic cop – “When vehicles
go over the side here, we get body bags
ready. We rarely see survivors”– and
watching him wave off the air ambulance, I
borrowed the officer’s phone, walked away
from the scene, and called my parents.
I kept it together until my father quietly
said, “He could’ve killed you.” Those
simple words triggered a full breakdown
and I just sobbed, thick tears leaving
streaky trails down my dirt-caked face. I
told him I needed to call my fiancée, and
his parting words stuck with me: “I’m glad
you’re okay. Planning a wedding is a lot
better than planning a funeral.”
I wiped away the tears and peered down atI WAS THE ONE who suggested we
undertake the five-hour-plus drive from
Los Angeles to Monterey, California. I even
suggested the very route that was nearly my
demise: Route 33, a serpentine road that
bisects the Los Padres National Forest,
twisting you up to a summit of 1.5km before
winding you back down onto Route 166.
This was in August, when British
supercar maker McLaren let me, a
motoring journalist, pilot a 570S Spider,
a R3.3 million drop-top coupé that boasts
a midmounted twin-turbo V-8, good for
562horsepower and 600Nm of torque.
It shrieks to 100km/h in just over three
seconds. In another 6.5, 200km/hr. The
sensation is otherworldly. The road and
surroundings warp around you as you
hurtle through space in a machine that
becomes more alive the closer you push it
to the limit. McLarens are beloved for how
accessible they make the knife’s edge.
Another journalist, an eager twenty-
something kid from England who I’d never
met, was my passenger.
Route 33 is not meant to be driven at
ten tenths. It’s a technical route with
tight hairpins that can appear out of
nowhere. When I swapped places with the
kid, he ripped off, seemingly capable. The
570 was lively and twitchy as he pressed
harder, but his inputs seemed smooth
and the car was responding favourably.
Less than five minutes later, he ran out
of talent and we ran out of road.The 570S’s cockpit.
Special airbags under
the dash help protect
the occupants’ knees
and legs.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JESSE CHEHAKSPEED