I'm not going to lie to you guys. I have recently (thanks a LOT, t_s!!) become obsessed with the McLaren F1. I never quite grasped it's full potential or legacy as a super car until somewhere last year, and still didn't really see its beauty until even more recently.
The one McLaren that spoke to me more than anything was the 1995 Le Mans winning Ueno Clinic liveried F1 GTR. The story behind the car is just too amazing.
Quick recap: In 1994 Gordon Murray decided to build several chassis for the 1995 season of the BPR Global GT Series, after prodding by a few race teams. He took the unused #019 F1 chassis, extensively modified it, and turned it into F1 GTR #01R, the test mule for the GTR platform. McLaren built 8 more besides #01R.
The cars were sold as cars for 4 hour races, which they won handily in 1995, but then customers wanted to use them in 24 hour races. McLaren had to test the car in these conditions, but with little time before Le Mans, they tool that #01R chassis to the Magnicourt circuit in France in May. That same month, a Japanese sponsor, Tokyo Ueno Clinic, told McLaren they wanted to be represented at Le Mans, but no racing team had space for them. As a result, they decided to use that test mule at the race a month later, with the small Japanese Kokusai Kaihatsu team running it. As we all know, it ended up winning the 1995 race, driven by Yannick Dalmas, Masanori Sekiya, and JJ Lehto.
The Kyosho Dauer 962 got my taste buds fiending for more of that highly detailed 1:64 action, so ebay obliged and, if you follow me on instagram you'd already know that the mail delivered me this beautiful beast yesterday afternoon. I'm even more amazed at it than I was at the 962, to be honest. It's just perfect to me.
I hope you enjoy the images!
My new favorite passtime: opening packages from Japan.
