Gordon Murray's V12 Masterpiece： New GMA T.50s! ｜ 4K

It's a big day because we finally get to drive the GMA T50S Niki Lauda on circuit. Feels a bit too basic, doesn't it? Um, okay. I am feeling blessed. That's so worthy. Can't do that. Okay, let's try one more thing. I'm really struggling. I just don't know how to get across the magnitude of what we're doing really. Really? I'm starting to speak now. Before we get to the driving, which I'm obviously very keen to do, let's remind ourselves the bare facts about this car and then fill in some detail with four-time IndyCar champ and a guy who's driven thousands of kilometers in it. Now you all know the GMA T50 road car, a purist dream and maybe the most exciting supercar on planet Earth. This car, the T50S, was designed and developed in parallel, but Gordon Murray insists it's not just a version of the T50, but a whole different vehicle. Even so it's got a 3.9 litre V12 shared with that car but now with 772 PS that's 761 horsepower, 195 bhp per litre without a turbo in sight and a fulsome 12,000 rpm to play with. It weighs less than 900 kilos which is about 450 kilos in fact less than an Aston Martin Valkyrie and with this aggressive aero and that iconic fan working very differently. It produces 1200 kilos of downforce. All of this is incredible, but Dario, please come in here and give us a bit more colour because you know this car so much better than me, obviously. Yeah, I'm good. Tell us a bit about the brief. The development phase and what you wanted to bring to the sort of dynamic identity of this car. So the brief was, it goes back to the F1. That Gordon, when he made the F1, there were certain compromises he made because some of the owners were pushing already to make it a track car. And he felt when it became a racing car, it was compromised. And he said, I'm going to do a very distinct car with T50 for the road only, no compromises, and then we'll do a track car. Not a racing car, but a track car. It was from day one, if you think about any racing car, some are fun to drive and some aren't. It's very one-dimensional. Does it? Is it fast? Yeah. Hit the laptop. Does it win? And the driving enjoyment is very much secondary or even further down the list of priorities. We were keen that this should be fun. It had to be fun to drive. It had to be fun to drive like me at 9, 10 tenths. It had to be fun to drive for somebody who's got less experience maybe and they're taking it to 50% of its capability. One thing we haven't done is we never had to make it faster. Okay, so it's a bit like the road car, you never quote 0-60s, etc. I'm sure the lap time is quick, but that isn't the be-all and end-all for this car. Okay, so tell us some of the details. What have you been most pleased with? What was the most difficult to get right as you went along? Creating this amazing thing. Yeah, the biggest sort of focus we had from day one, again, was making that friendly car. Yeah. Friendly balance. Making it fun, but making it friendly that it didn't do anything untoward at or near the limit. Hardest thing to do. I do, um... I mean, the brakes, we worked very hard on the brake cooling. Okay. You know, we've put a new... Yeah, these are quite special, aren't they? It's a new brake package. Yeah, there's a lot of money in those brakes and the bells that hold them and the materials involved. The car, in the last six months, has had a full redesign of the front end to aid brake cooling. And that's one of the reasons it's not already out to customers with just getting that absolutely right, because obviously safety's... It's paramount, so we've now got more brake cooling than we'll ever need. The. From day one, the engines are a thing of wonder. Oh, it's unbelievable. Yeah, I can't wait to experience it. I mean, I heard you talking about the figures there. I think the block's the same. There's some of the bits in it, but the way it is put together, there's no emissions, there's no cats. They've got these 12 extra injectors on the top that just fire fuel into the car. Oh, I love it. And in some ways, when it hits, when those secondary injectors hit, you'll feel this extra kick of 8,500 RPM. And it accelerates even more. Off it goes. Now, T50 road car famously has the manual gearbox for a paddle shift with this. Sometimes I drive a few of these things, it's hard to get those gear shifts right and feel like a proper race car without the clunkiness, et cetera. How have you got this thing dialed in? It is, it's a... How do I put it? There's nothing trick about it. It's a very pure analogue car and that to us is very important. So. Shift on the lights. It's an aggressive shift. It's an aggressive feel with the shift. If the TC's cutting in as well, it gets even more aggressive. But we were very careful to try and smooth it out so it doesn't break traction in those lower gears. On the downshifts, again, it doesn't lock the rears. And it was difficult to get a balance between, again, that 50%, driving it at 50%, and then driving it at 100% and getting it to work in both those situations. Huge front splitter, obviously, but we should probably walk towards the back because we've still got the fan, which is iconic. I know in the road car, it's not really used for creating downforce. It's a whole different set of programs, different speed phases, cornering, etc. This thing, I guess, just is running flat out. Yeah, and you'll hear it when it starts up. The fan runs flat out. The T50, it does create downforce, the way it works on the front. The leading edge of the floor, basically that stops the air separating, allows you to have a more aggressive angle on the floor, and that's its main job here, it just works harder, less compromise again, it doesn't, again like T50, it doesn't. Suck the car to the road. It's not like the Brabham BT46. Yeah. It works in a very similar way. So basically there's a duct somewhere at the bottom of the diffuser and it's pulling air through there. Yeah. I mean a normal floor would be sort of this angle and if you get more aggressive than that it stalls. Yeah. The floor in this goes up like that. Okay so it stops that separation. And it stops that separation and allows it to be a more aggressive angle of the floor, a more powerful floor to give you more downforce. Okay so finally... What should I expect? Tell me about what I should be prepared for when I get in this thing. I think the acceleration will blow your mind. Yeah. You know, that sub-900 kilos, 760 horsepower, it accelerates well. I think one of the things I've loved about the car from the first day is, again, when you're driving it slowly, It moves still, it's got mechanical grip, you're not relying on a roller skate to control the aero platform at all times. Hey, hey, hey. It moves around, it's lovely at low speed, and then the closer you get to the limit, it sort of sits down into the track. Okay, sounds good. Well, I'm definitely not going to be able to drive it as fast as Dario, but before I get in, I want a passenger ride, so you can show me a hundred percent. Let's stick at 100, not 101, and then I'll drive it at 85. Should we do that? Sounds real, let's go big team. Okay, car's warmed up. Dario's warmed up. Here we go. Goal! I already want to marry the engine. So we're on the pit limiter, second gear, just having a 60k. So angry, love it. Oh my god. Oh my god. He really was warming it up. The vibration of this engine, I can feel it in my chest. Mario is so strong, so unhurried, yet very quickly. You can feel the catches of gold nipping away on this. Impressive, but it does weirdly feel different to a race car. It feels like this giant celebration of sensations and noises. How economical we can find that short straight. Wow, he's so good. It was a massive break. Late on the brakes. Wow, how does he do it? The car feels so calm as it's going. It goes to the other side, but it doesn't seem to stop the progress of the car. Oh my God, listen to it. F1 car, but with a roof. Oh, I love the little punch that takes the throttle so early. Late, but it doesn't feel brutal. That is epic. That is proper legend. To get a ride in this car with Dario at the wheel, smooth as silk and Fast as hell already makes this an unforgettable day. The T50S has thumping physical performance, but there's a lightness of touch, a fluidity that's tangible even from the passenger seat. And my God, the noise. It makes the road car soundtrack seem thin and a bit puny. This is Cosworth's V12 masterpiece, Unfettered. And it's nearly my time to experience it for real. Okay, so let's go through the interior of this T50S. Obviously central driving position, which is fantastic. Just two pedals in this car because we have a paddle shift X-track gearbox. This little yoke steering wheel, which actually feels fantastic. It's got radio function indicators, wipers. There's a pit lane speed limiter here, so 60 kph. And then a flash, which I'm sure you might need if you had any other cars around you because this thing is rapid as hell. But this is the big control panel. And I think it's actually really, really cool because you've got not only adjustable ABS and traction control, which you'd expect. So it goes. From zero to nine, basically. So nine is the most intervention and then dial it back as you want to. At the moment, we've got ABS on eight and traction control on seven, which sounds Like I'm using a hell of a lot of intervention but this is what Dario, I think he was maybe a couple of clicks back on the ABS but he was using seven on the traction as well. Then you've got e-pass which you can adjust, we're running on three, four and five are lighter, less assistance as you go down. But what's really cool is that the suspension, the dampers, you can actually adjust those on the fly as well. So we've got front and rear compression and front and rear rebound Just operated on. on these dials as well which i think is cool the car's got mechanical adjustable roll bars as well which you have to set take the bodywork off and play around with but having this access a bit like a GT3 RS but ramped up a lot because there's a lot more settings on it is really really cool to start it basically master switch on hit this start button which wakes the car up takes a while there's quite a few screens to go through this uh cosworth screen ahead of me But once it has cycled through, to start the car, see this rotation on here, this rotary control changes the various different screens that you want. I'm just staying on the driver information screen but there's more engineering screens as well. But to start the car, effectively as soon as I press the brake, this green light starts to flash. I press start and then away we go. I'm not going to do it now because there's people around and we're in a pit garage and they'll go deaf. But, I love The environment here is fantastic and I love that you can play with suspension, traction, ABS, e-pass so so simply. This whole car feels so set up for someone to jump in, feel comfortable and then start to push the limits and push the adjustability of the car. Obviously we've got brake bias as well but yeah that's a little taste of the car but the overriding impression. The central driving position, the visibility and the simplicity of everything is just very GMA and very cool. Just how cool? I'm about to find out. This is the T50S. Turn it up and drink it in. Everything as you'd expect. Feels lovely and light. Steering is so light. Brakes are carbon carbon but hard straight away to be honest. Dario said, funnily enough, although it's such a revvy engine. You can always be a gear higher than you think. Wow, the brakes are good, straight out the box. I can't believe how much it feels pretty good even on cold tires. It doesn't feel too bad at all. Oh, it's beautiful. It feels so light. I'm starting to speak now. Wow, the steering is so light. It just throttles, folks. Wow, fantastic. I don't know this track that well, so it's actually such a light car, figuring out if you've got higher temperatures is quite difficult because it's just such a low effort. Oh it's gorgeous. Oh, my God. The engine, but it also has torque and it tugs because the car is so light, so you really can Not just drink that last little bit, but enjoy. The way the power builds, it's crazy. And I can understand why, because it feels like it has such lovely manners. The T50S is shockingly friendly, in fact. On my first flying lap and whilst talking to the camera, I matched the LM GT3 pole time from last year's WEC race. Now, the car will go much quicker, somewhere between a GT3 machine and a Le Mans hypercar, But for lap one of a precious unknown car on a track I've barely driven on and not at all for over two years, speaks volumes for the quality of the engineering philosophy and the meticulous development work carried out by GMA. It doesn't appear to have any vices. It does extraordinary things in terms of performance. All right. But it doesn't tax you as a driver and it seems to do everything effortlessly. And it sounds really cheesy, but it absolutely justifies everything that Gordon Murray stands for. That lightweight is the answer. It's the most virtuous thing, because everything is improved. Every single thing is improved because of the lack of mass. I did not talk as much as I should have talked, but it's some car to get your head around because it's at once extremely light and agile, but because you're not bullying the car ever and it feels so at home doing this, I think it might take a while to find the limit almost because it's so, it changes direction so well and because it's so light and poised you sort of don't think it can possibly stick like a real downforce car and then you get to the corners and obviously it does it's something completely different and it's pretty awesome In fact, it's joyous and scintillating and unique. The car fizzes with energy and feedback. It indulges the driver, but also dares you to be better, faster and smoother. Every dynamic trait is beautifully judged and the whole coalesces into something even greater than the sum of its outstanding parts. Spoiler alert, all these multi-million track specials are huge fun and adept at serving up vast performance to enthusiastic non-professional drivers. But none quite puts you in touch with all four contact patches like the T50S. None delivers savagery and sweet poise so intuitively. Nothing grants the freedom of expression with such unforgettable theatre and pure, unfiltered entertainment. The GMA T50S is the dream. It really is as simple as that. To all those involved, I give huge respect and curse for showing me a peak I didn't know existed. Will it ever get any better than this?