More than a year and a half has passed since McLaren uncovered the 720S in Geneva as the successor of the 650S, and the British supercar continues to impress.
Be it at the drag strip or on the track, it constantly humiliates more powerful vehicles, and it apparently takes an insane output to put it in its corner.
On paper, the 720S doesn’t seem like such a hypercar slayer, with its twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 making 720 PS (710 hp / 530 kW) and 770 Nm (568 lb-ft) of torque. The Woking-based car firm claims that it only takes 2.9 seconds to hit 100 km/h (62 mph) and maxes out at 341 km/h (212 mph).
Drag racing enthusiasts know that, on a good day, the 720S is capable of running the 1/4-mile in just a little under 10 seconds. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a stock model, as messing with its internals even slightly makes it even faster!
Take this example, for instance, which with only a minor ECU tune managed to hit almost 236 km/h (147 mph) at the end of the quarter-mile, and posted a time of just 9.6 seconds. That’s a couple of a tenths of a second quicker than a Dodge Demon, which packs nearly 280 horses more than the 720S and was pretty much born on the drag strip. Also, it’s only 0.8 seconds slower than Boba Motoring’s 1,233 hp VW Golf Mk2.