McLaren 750S vs Ferrari 296 GTB Road And Track Battle Top Gear

What we have for you today is a proper grudge match, nothing less than a battle to crown the world's greatest supercar. That's all true Ollie, but it's so much more right? So let's sell it. Ferrari 296 GTB McLaren 750S Two epic supercars Get ready for war This summer's ultimate showdown is here. There can only be one winner. Okay, maybe we got a bit carried away, but this is the big one. Ferrari versus McLaren, hybrid versus pure internal combustion and, let's be honest, two of the very best supercars ever built going head to head on road and track. They cost around £240,000 each plus the inevitable extras and whilst the Ferrari has the bragging rights with 819 horsepower, thanks to a three litre twin turbocharged engine working in conjunction with an electric motor, the McLaren actually has the better power to weight ratio. Its four litre twin turbo V8 is good for 740 horsepower, but with a carbon tub and no battery pack, it weighs just 1389 kilos, literally hundreds of kilos lighter than the Ferrari. Anyway, there is much to do, so let's begin. And although this is a summer blockbuster of a test, the weather is very, very autumnal and inconsistent. Don't at us, we did our best. There will be sunshine and tyre smoke later though, promise. Welcome to Smurfland, everybody, where magical things can happen. This is the 296 and it is rightfully the benchmark. In a lot of ways, McLaren should walk it, shouldn't it? On paper, it just doesn't quite add up for people who just care about the driving dynamics. Ferrari do some incredible work and this car is sort of magical, it really is. Watching that Ferrari struggle for traction ahead of me. Yeah, this is not supercar weather up in Wales, but these are the conditions a supercar and modern supercar could still excel in because you want it to be exciting and visceral and thrilling, even when it's not going absolutely ballistic and hasn't got conditions in its favour. And these are, they really are, they are fantastic everyday cars. So first, let's talk about the engine. It's just such a lovely little engine. It doesn't have that rabid sharpness of, I don't know, 458 Speciale, my mostest, favouritest car ever. But as turbocharged engines go in a modern supercar, it's so good. Oli's belying it now, isn't he, by overtaking me. But yeah, the engine has this lovely crisp throttle response because you've got that electric kick that needs to catch up with that boost. There's so much performance, but you'd expect that when you're in power, wouldn't you? What you might not expect is how compact, how light and how small this car feels. That short wheelbase really does work and it creates an agility that you just can't believe. Doesn't that Ferrari look corking on the road, though? It almost forgives that colour scheme. Right, let's play with the modes a bit here. So I'm in Sport on my powertrain and handling Comfort, that's suspension, because I've still got adaptive dampers in this. And they're in, just tickling it. You can start to feel the tyres having had enough. Just watching that Ferrari wriggle out of corners. But every time he gets like a 10 metre jump on me, because that hybrid system just goes so well, 160 horsepower of instant kick. Whereas I've got to wait for the turbo to just pick up, which, to be fair, doesn't take any time at all, because this engine now feels sharper. The gearbox feels sharper. It all feels a little bit more responsive than it did in the 720. But still this concentration on dynamics in the McLaren. How wonderful this steering is. It is better than the Ferraris in these conditions. You've got much more communication from it. How great that sort of damping control is. Just there's so much feel in it. And then you've got this sledgehammer power. And when you hit it, this widescreen view out, it just feels like you're on the front of a roller coaster. It just punts you down the road so hard. Good point, Ollie. We should be clear that the Ferrari is an Assetto Fiorano package car, which means it's lighter, has a little more aero and features fixed-rate spool valve dampers. It's the hardcore one, as is this particular 750S with uprated track brakes, a titanium roll cage, god-awful centre seats, but still it's adjustable suspension intact. In these conditions, it's a help, as is the fantastically feelsome hydraulic power steering. Oh man, the Ferrari is good though. So engine great, gearbox fantastic, such agility, and the electronics are superb. I would not normally do this, but I'm going to put it in wet mode. The way the wet programming works doesn't cut sharply the power. It's like it just squeezes the performance down and then lets it back up again. So it is restrictive, but it's so clever and efficient in the way that it does it that it's not frustrating and it feels like this new sort of supercar personality. However, supercars, doesn't matter how clever they get, what you really want to enjoy about them is the simple thrill. And so if you wind it up from wet mode to, say, race mode or CT off, you really do get the unbridled supercar experience. The way this thing gets out of turns is incredible. The torque is fantastic. If it suffers anywhere compared to the McLaren, I think it's the steering. It's very quick and there's just not a flat of feel. And when you've got these sorts of conditions, you can turn like and get an understeer there. I don't really feel it, it just happens. So you don't quite have the communication of the McLaren. This feels so planted, so agile. It feels like it's got a longer wheelbase than that Ferrari, which just feels so sharp into corners. But this is a less corrupted car than that. It's a more natural supercar to drive. It feels so of the process. This really is something special. It makes the SF90 feel really sort of overwrought and clumsy. There's a delicacy about the car. And an anger that's really timeless. As you might be able to tell, the 296 GTB and 750S are both fundamentally brilliant cars. The in-car impressions were given during miserable conditions, but later we flew dry roads too, and the advantage ebbed and flowed almost mile by mile. However, we did come to some conclusions. So here's a recap before we head to the track. Okay then, which one did you prefer on the road? It's actually a pretty complicated question, isn't it? I would say, by a nose, the McLaren. Yeah. I think the weather really played into its hands. In the Ferrari, in the wet, the speed of the steering makes the car feel not nervous, but you don't get any slap to just feel what the car's doing. It's on that super stiff suspension. So I think the conditions played into the hands of the McLaren. They are closer. They're so good. I was really impressed with the tyres on that, which I thought were going to be a disaster, but were actually pretty good. But the Ferrari's engine is its sort of trump card, isn't it? Because it's just got so much torque. That hybrid, it just hits hard wherever, whenever. It's got no fallback. And it sounds better. It sounds better. It's more exotic in the way it feels. This thing at the top end is amazing. But this thing's sort of amazing everywhere, from tick over to right to the limiter. So they're great. I love this car. The different modes are really interesting. But effectively, the car has one character and you just turn it up or down. And in this one, the different modes, they're trying to give it different feels. Sport mode's a bit more aggressive and to me, a little bit artificial. But it's a gorgeous car. I love how compact it is. And the interior feels, to me, so much more special. Where you sit, just where you are in the chassis, you're right down there connected to the road. Yeah, completely. Although those seats, do you get on with those seats? No one gets on with those seats. I mean, they're just a disaster. It's just carbon with some pads on it. They used to do really, really good carbon back sport seats and those are not them. Yeah, P1 and 675 seats were perfect. Yeah, were perfect. But I guess the other thing about the interior of this that scores is you plug your phone in and you have Apple CarPlay and it works, which is not something that we could have said about the Clarence before. This thing, you don't have as nice a driving position and it's impossible to understand what's happening. Yeah, and all those haptics on the steering wheel, all those buttons and things, they just don't work. They're just a nightmare to use. You give up. It's annoying. The radio reception's rubbish. Like, it's so annoying because to drive on a long journey, it's lovely. It actually rides well at high speed, eighth gear, low revs. You're in this beautiful, you know, Ferrari cruising along. It feels great, but you can't actually use any of the controls. No, but you can do distance in them, can't you? There's too much road noise in the McLaren, but there's plenty of luggage space in both of them. You can actually use them, which there isn't like in an SF90, you've got no luggage space in, so you can actually use them quite nicely. I would like to use them all day, every day, especially on a racetrack. Which is just over there. Yeah. Shall we go over there? Yeah, please. The racetrack on a dry, sunny day with a Ferrari 296 GTB Assetto Fiorano and a McLaren 750S with every performance and lightweight option fitted. What a dream. And it was for a while. Sadly, just as we started up those interior cameras, it felt as if waves from the Irish Sea were crashing directly onto the windscreens of our two blockbuster supercars. Maybe this is the Meg 3 only without the shark and with much worse driving. Anyway, please suspend some disbelief as we try to impart impressions from the dry in torrential rain. Right, here we go. Out on track at angle C, slight change in the weather conditions. It is hosing it down. But still, let's go for qualifying mode, shall we? I'm on a brand new set of tyres which I don't think are going to have any grip at all until we've got some heat in them. Oh, no, they really haven't. So let's see what this 296 is like on track. Very exciting because it has so much torque, so much power. I mean, this car did not need to have 818 horsepower. 100 less than that would have been more than adequate. And because you've got like 165 horsepower of electric, it's just instant torque. It just gives those turbos a chance to get going. There doesn't need much encouragement to do, really. Oh, there's very, very little grip indeed. So much geeky detail that we really need to get into with these cars because they're both so good but really different. They sort of arrive at the same destination just by a really different means. So straight away, as on the road, it's so much more focused in here. The driving position, where you are in the car in relation to the road. The view out is so good and it gives you the old cliche about like a race car. It has power. So much top end grunt. So yeah, it feels more special, I think. More focused. And it feels like a real ground up thing, you know. Everything is focused on the driver. And that extends to the steering feel, the brake feel. Really, really good. Ferrari's very fast steering and in damp and wet conditions, it's not... You can't trust it. You can't believe... You can trust the car. You don't feel you can trust it because of the speed and the steering and response. This is more natural. And it's so fiery. On the road, the Ferrari does feel quicker, I think because of the torque delivery is just insane. It's like this really revvy little engine but with the torque of like a big block V8. But on the track where you can get into the top end of it more, this thing is rapid. It's so fiery at the top end. I've said before, I'm not a massive fan of the 296's brakes because it feels like it breaks in chunks. It's a full brake by wire system and it just feels like it breaks in chunks rather than very smooth progression. But still, I'm not complaining about the stopping power. That's for sure. But this car is so bright, so vibrant in your hands. It's so exciting to drive. It's just a bit of an absolute loo. I've been driving that McLaren a fair bit as well and I love the McLaren sort of natural steering. It's sort of very... It's more communicative than the 296 but the 296 is so bloody exciting. Just utterly rampant power. It just comes in and you're just like, oh my God, here we go. The things I do not like about this car are pretty short list to be honest. I hate sport mode for the powertrain. So I've got handling and powertrain settings up here. Comfort, sport and track in each. And sport for the powertrain is meant to be, I guess, dramatic. They've added a bit of Lambo style aggression to it and it's so at odds with what this car is all about. It just doesn't work and in the way it actually upsets the car. It's stupid. So actually, it seems strange but go up from sport to track and you get a much better... You get much better gear shifts, much more natural feel to the car. I guess supercars are about how they make you feel and this thing is throttling it. So yes, conditions transpired against us. However, whilst that makes the video edit a nightmare, it does mean we drove these fantastic cars on road and track in all weathers and for the most part, clear patterns emerged. Yeah, for example, the McLaren beats the Ferrari in some key areas. The driving environment is more focused and easier to use. Plus, in terms of great feel, steering feel and front-end bite, it's advantaged McLaren. But the Ferrari counters with its brilliant hybrid powertrain which just makes the sweet V6 engine feel absolutely superpowered and beyond that, its masterful electronics and quite phenomenal traction ensure these cars are incredibly difficult to separate. They live up to our blockbuster hype and have honestly blown our minds and reduced us to little kids which is what supercars are all about. It's not gone exactly according to plan, has it? We thought we'd have loads of time and it'd be beautiful sunny on the track but no, we've had a load more rain. However, before it rained, we did have a good chance to have a go in them, didn't we? We drove them and I think the main thing for me is just how insanely fast they are. How exploitable, how fast, just how nutty they are. And there's nothing else, and we talked about this, there's nothing else in this class that does what these two do to the same extent. There's the Huracan Maserati MC20. We reckon the 296 is better than an SF90. We reckon that is better than anything else McLaren do at the moment. Yeah, they're just sweet spot cars but they're not sweet spot as in like, oh, they're about right. They're insanely excessive but in a brilliant way. Now, we could talk about them for a very long time and actually off-camera, Getro and I have been doing exactly that. However, we have also come to a conclusion. Go on then, reveal our winner. And the winner is, by the smallest of margins, because of all the geeky stuff we love like steering feel and brake feel and driving environment, the McLaren 750S is the best supercar on sale right now. It beats the 296 but don't be too sad Ferrari fans because this car is superb as well. You cannot lose.