FIRST LOOK McLaren P1 Drift Car Mad Mike s Rotary Swapped MadMac

I've always wondered why they call you Mad Mike! This is Mad Mac, the McLaren P1 final boss and very possibly the wildest drift car ever to shred a tyre. What started as a not-entirely-sober chat between King of Sideways Mad Mike Waddett and race-bred supercar specialist Dean Lanzante has become the most insane project car build of 2024. So here's Mr. Mad himself in the Lanzante workshops to explain the story so far. The crazy thing is, is this all evolved from a conversation when I first met Dean and we were talking about Tamiya radio-controlled cars from like the 80s. It's crazy that just a simple discussion like that is executed into, the discussion got deeper and deeper into what would your next craziest, what's the next dream build for you? You know, Goodwood Festival of Speed for me is priority one on the calendar when it comes to all the events from the pro drift competitions, the demonstrations, the film shoots we do with Red Bull and just really just trying to inspire the world, like Goodwood is number one. For me the engagement with the fans and like the people, the drivers, all the different genres of motorsport for me, I get to, I'm as much of a fan as I am out there ripping and putting on a show. So that discussion with Dean, we discovered that, well he mentioned like what would that next dream build be? And for me, going from like the Lamborghini project to doing McLaren and really telling the name of Bruce McLaren. Most people know McLaren of course as the high-end supercars, but Bruce was a Kiwi legend, another, you know, kid chasing dreams at a young age, come from little New Zealand, which half the people don't even know is a country around the world. So there's a few stories I want to do, you know, Goodwood Circuit, you know, of course is the track where Bruce unfortunately lost his life. So there's a few stories I want to tell through, you know, my time of being able to build this and entertain. And you've got that proud Kiwi bird on the front of this and it just, that brings me into, the first thing that struck me when I walked in and saw this car is the quality of the fit and finish that you've executed on something that is born to be gnarly, to go sideways, to be like abused and beat on. But like your panel gaps, your headlights, your carbon fibre work is all stunning. Like all the guys involved with this build must be so proud of that. Yeah, I mean, I guess the biggest challenge is keeping it to that world class. You know, like I say, Goodwood is, for me and many, is the biggest, most historic, prestigious motorsport event on the planet. So when you're building something to entertain and showcase what you bring as a team and your guys, we want to execute the best. The crazy thing is that with this buildmanship and workmanship, we're still created in a hundred days at our shop in the Madland back at Hampton Downs. The deadline for this has been amazing. I should just explain that we are literally in the workshop at Lanzante, a couple of days out from Goodwood Festival of Speed. So if you can hear some kind of tinkering going on behind us, that's because they're working on cars, which are so secret. We can't even show you, but don't worry about that. I mean, let's just get sucked into some of the details. Well, I want to show you the main detail and that was changing the heart. So when it came to a hundred day build, we were two to three weeks into it and I was still scratching my head on what to do with this McLaren. You know, of course, an amazing motor that come in these things. So we still had the V8 in it? Still had the V8, it was perfect. So Lanzante and the team here did a fabulous job of grafting a P1 GTR and a 650S McLaren, because I wanted the monocoque out of the 650S because I wanted the FIA roll cage. I wanted the safety so I can really push the extremes and execute absolute madness driving in this thing. So they grafted the two cars together, two perfectly good cars. And really when it showed up, it was like, I was actually so nervous. When it showed up to my shop in New Zealand, like where to cut because it's obviously, you know, very valuable. Didn't it look too good to rip apart almost? It was, it was like a perfect example, but then my vision was so clear and I guess also with the crazy timelines, it was like we just had to get into it. And like I say, we're two to three weeks into this build. A lot of the phone calls I'm making, people are already, yeah, we've done this and we've done that and we've got this bolt-on turbo kit and that and we can make 1200 horsepower and like, there's just too many we've done. And as soon as someone's saying we've done, I'm just wanting to hang up the phone. And we don't build Lego kits at the Mad Lab. And for us, it's about really creating something unique that we're proud of, like never stop challenging for ourselves. And we'll take you to the heart of this thing now. I love that normally if we were going to do like show people the engine, we'd be like, right, let's work out how we get the engine cover off. Kind of no need to here. No, you can see most of the stuff. I mean, you've got obviously this ginormous Garrett turbo, but what really is the crazy part was pulling the V8 out and doing the engine swap. So as I say, rotary is our knowledge. So we've built a full billet 20B, so it's a three rotor. It's got individual throttle bodies. And then it goes through obviously all the intake, the plenum comes around, Garrett turbo, like everything handmade. And that's because like from your MX-5, your RX-7, your I guess Mazda 3s, all those Mazdas, you've got so much knowledge in this power plant. I guess figuring out how to put one of those in a McLaren is one less job than working with an engine you're not so familiar with. Even down to the wiring and the ECU. We just took the steering wheel off this car at the shop, was one of the first things we did. And then we couldn't even start the car. It just comes up, no steering wheel. And we just could not even tell the ECU to like fire. And we're like, man, if we're doing film shoots and demonstrations and we're having troubles like that, a lot of the film shoots, you've got helicopters in the sky waiting, calling action. And if we've got fault codes coming up. You're going control, lock, delete, come on. So we've literally rewired this entire car. The brain of this thing is now Haltech, which is what we run in all our cars that come out of Australia. And now we were able to program and tell everything what to do, right down to even the shifter. I'll open this up now. So we've put a gearbox shifter. So we took the paddle shift off the steering wheel. Because obviously with drifting, another mod was obviously all the steering and having to get 900 degrees of rotation. So we needed a stick shift. So the shifter that's in here now is literally off my, well, not even mine. It's off my son's simulator at home. So your poor son's gone to do some sim racing and gone, where's my shifter? He came down to the Mad Lab and was like, where is the shifter off my simulator? I was like, oh, it's in the McLaren. It's in Mad Mac. He's like, can I get it back? Because I'm doing a drift competition tonight. I'm like, ah, we've kind of pulled it apart. Dad's got to go to work. Sorry. So a P1 obviously originally would have had no gear lever in the middle. And you've now got two levers in the middle. So one's a shifter. Is that the other one the hydraulic handbrake? Hydraulic handbrake, yeah. So you can see we've got another caliper that we've mounted. So we've had to modify the knuckle. And then, yeah, so the hub and all that design. So we've been able to essentially set that apart. So I set up, my background was motocross. And so motocross, you know, you've got a front brake and a back brake. So essentially with drifting and drift cars, I set up exactly the same. So my foot brake is, we can still control it 50-50 or whatever with a bias adjuster. But it's actually, I have it set to 99% as foot brake is on the front. And then you can unstick the rear whenever you want. If I need rear brake, I've got the hydraulic handbrake. It's kind of funny because a P1 was originally one of the hybrid holy trinity. This has obviously got no electrical assistance anymore. But it kind of is a hybrid because it's like part P1, part 650S, part Mazda, and then just part, like the darkest parts of your brain, all kind of fused together to give you this mutant. And it's like I was saying before, this car actually has the knuckles off my RX-7. So with Parts Shop Max, we've developed a knuckle that gets, you know, all the right Ackermann and lock that we need. We've, you know, modified the rack itself, made our own tire rods, lower controller, up control. Like there's a lot of work, man, in 100 days. We've actually, it's been fortunate enough that we've been able to document this through the process. I mean, there's so many details to pick up on, but I just want to go down here. We can take this cover off. Tell me about the exhaust arrangement. What's going on with these pipes? You've got your wastegate. So these two pipes here are your wastegates, which are here plumbed in for the turbo. And then your two pipes out the back is literally the hot side of the exhaust. And which of these spits more fire? Pretty equal, really. This one's popping flames on full boost. And then this one's popping a lot of flames on full boost and decel and just all the time, really. Yeah. I mean, just again, the quality of the workmanship, even where you can't quite see it. I mean, this is all going to be enveloped in smoke most of the time. So most people won't see it as it roars by, but just all the billet in here and it's all custom with Mad Mike logo. For me, cars are artwork, right? It's not about the value of the platform, but it's about the art that you create with it. The longer you just stand and look is the more you'll notice. Are you going to point out this detail on the washers now? Because this is fantastic, isn't it? Yeah, even the fender washers we've got, they've been machined little rotors. So they're essentially the same because Blair that does all our CNC, he does our rotors, like modifies the internals inside the motor. So he's actually got the exact same shape and made our little fender washers. Even the body kit alone, so Murosan in Japan, from going up there and competing, this was a two week process, which to some people was years to design and develop a body kit. And we're 3D scanning the car. We sat down for about three hours and for me, from designing the wheels and then getting the proportions right of how wide you want the body aesthetically and also for handling performance. So from the wheels to the body kit, there's just, I don't know, I still can't even believe that we've done it in 100 days. We'll hear what went wrong with the build from Mike in a moment. While we were down at Lanzante, I grabbed a chat with the boss himself, Dean, to get his side of Mad Max story. Right at the genesis of this project, you had to create the basis, the donor car, you know, that would morph into what's behind you. So can you just talk us through how that came about? I mean, initially, we obviously spoke about P1 GTR and P1 GTR has got a lot of componentry that wouldn't benefit itself for a drift car. So hybrid systems and active suspension, active aero. And there is some economics involved with this as well. The cost of tearing apart a GTR. There's no budget for this, surely? Well, that went to pieces later, for sure, definitely. So we decided we'd need a sequential gearbox, for sure. That's going to help in this. It's going to be passive suspension. And then we used a tub of, a 650 baseline tub is the same as a P1 tub. But we wanted a roll cage in it, so we used a GT3 roll cage. And the body panels from a GT3 are the front wings and lower front bumper, just because they're actually wider than P1. And we knew we were going to have some steering lock issues or Mike was going to have some steering lock issues later on. So the Lanzanti side was to not literally give a P1, but to give something that was leaning towards what was going to be required when it got to New Zealand. Right. Now, of course, what you sent then was this quite beautiful white, box-fresh, kind of, you know, Lanzanti spec. Yeah, a blank canvas. Yeah, a blank canvas, exactly, with a twin turbo V8 in the back. Yeah. What on earth went through your head when this rolled off the low loader with a rotary in the back of it? Well, I'd obviously been briefed that this was happening and we wanted to give a running car just so we knew everything worked. You know, there's a lot of electronics and stuff like that just to ensure that there was at least a good starting point. And the early discussions were that it would be a V8 still. So it was, it moved quite rapidly into the rotary so we knew what was coming. And obviously I'd seen images and stuff, but I think people, when they see this at Goodwood, would also understand is nothing quite prepares you for visually what it is when you see it in the flesh. You guys at Lanzanti, one of the things you're most famous, most infamous for, celebrated around the world, is taking the world's ultimate track only cars and making them road legal. Not this one. So, Mad Mac won't be drifting the M25 anytime soon, which is probably fair enough given how completely bonkers it is. But it very nearly didn't make it all the way back from New Zealand to England at all. Engine making so much boost that it bent the butterfly valves in the throttle bodies to a taco shape. Yep. So if it's bending, make it stronger. So we literally pulled the throttle bodies apart. We got some solid bar, chromoly bar, and actually sliced it. Like salami. So we've made them from 0.9 millimetre brass butterflies that are now 1.6 and out of chromoly. Even when we did that, we probably didn't need to, but also the shaft those butterflies are on was also brass. So we've made a full one piece chromoly shaft as well. No more taco butterflies. OK, good news. Now we should say I don't think we've covered the power yet, so it's 1,000 horsepower. Yep. We could wind a lot more into it if we wanted to, but it's a balance. You can have so much power that all you're doing is burning rubber and actually going nowhere. And I guess with drifting, a lot of people just look at drifting and think it's a car that's rear-wheel drive with a lot of horsepower and no grip. But we want as much grip as possible. Every time you hit that same corner, to keep that fair and adrenaline flow, you want to be fast and have to get that fair level. So we're trying to get as much grip as possible. At the same time, with this configuration, we know we're only running 19, 20 pound boost and we're just shy of 1,000 horsepower at the wheels, which is incredible out of a little two litre engine. So it's 2,000cc three rotor. And very appropriate for a P1, because it was always as near a damn it 1,000 horsepower back in the day with the hybrid system. Okay. Problem number two. Your engine generates so much heat, it melts your exhaust manifold. Yep. Again. What do you do? We just use some stronger like steam pipe pretty much to make the manifold, more braces and yeah, just stronger. Build it, build it harder, build it stronger. Then you had problem number three. Engine makes so much power, it tries to twist the whole subframe of the car. Yep. So again, you bend the chassis. Yep. That's how crazy this thing is. What about you had water in the gearbox actuator at one point, so it wasn't selecting gears? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that was just a factory item. You'd think a British supercar would be weatherproof, wouldn't you? I mean, the summers that we have over here. Yeah. In New Zealand, to be honest, we have pretty much the same four seasons in one day. It goes from sun to rain and yeah, it was just one of those things and the unfortunate part about that was our hero shoot. So we, you know, had invested in the massive media crew to come out and capture this thing. We had done a couple of shakedowns. We were happy with it and then roll it out of the shed. I go to click it into gear and then just no signal and it was just a simple, yeah, the actuator, which is a very expensive part. And the gear lever itself, which you nicked from your son's gaming rig, that's 3D printed and when you first did the shakedown, it like came clean off in your hand? Yeah, well again, you know, like technology and people creating new parts and everyone, you know, not just us in this industry but people that are creating the parts are always trying to, you know, push the limits and see what's, what's, you know, achievable and with the 3D printing, you know, some of the guys are 3D printing titanium now and unfortunately the stuff that we used the 3D printing the gearbox cross member wasn't quite strong enough and I just ripped it straight out. Plus, I'm pretty savage when I'm in this car and try to, you know, to get this thing to go sideways, you have to be pretty tough on it. I mean, there's no one probably in the world that's more experienced at looking out the side window than you but talk about the level of commitment that this thing needs. Like, even for you, is this a scary car to drive? Oh, it's definitely very scary. It's a very weird sensation driving this because this is probably, well, this definitely feels like the safest car that we have built. Inside it, feels so safe. However, it's so freaking fast and then the feeling of having the front wheels so close, well, most of the drift cars, our wheels are in front of us, right? So, and then you've got the firewall. Because this car's so wide on full lock, the wheels are coming in to where, almost like your calf muscles. So you're sitting so far up the car with all this overhang on the back. I'm still learning. Like, we've only done, what, two or three shakedowns. And you've got to go out in front of like 200,000 people at Goodwood and put on a show. I mean, it's no pressure, isn't it? I thrive on the pressure. Even my son says to me, he's like, Dad, how do you not get nervous? You know, and I'm like, I don't know if I don't show the nerves, I'm still nervous inside and I believe if you're not nervous then the reward ain't big enough. Find something better, crazier to do. You get that little fear and adrenaline, you know. So, like I say, we build cars to entertain, not to show off any wealth or prove any wealth. I haven't got any wealth because I've just got a lot of cars. I'm rich in cars. I think it's a fantastic project. I can't wait to hear it. I can't wait to see the flames that are going to come out of here and hopefully feel it. So, you have got a passenger seat? Yeah, we've got. I would quite like to come along for a ride. That's probably priority one of every one of my cars, has to have a passenger seat. It's the best part of my job is being able to take people for hot laps so they can experience my adrenaline and feel it. I know if I'm scared then they're probably scared too. Here's how you know that Mike and his MadLab team have every faith in their build. Just two days before the cars due to headlines during the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, he's willing to give it a full send shakedown on the notoriously quick Goodwood Motor Circuit just down the road from the Duke of Richmond's driveway. And, he wasn't kidding when he said he likes bringing a passenger along for the ride. Noise limits? What noise limits? Woohoohoo! Shouting over a triple rotor monster on straight pipes was pointless so I just enjoyed the ride. But what was incredible was just how slick everything felt inside the car. I thought it would be brutal and furious and feel like you were getting beaten up. But the rotary engine zips through the revs amazingly smoothly and there's so much power it'll unstick the rears in 6th gear as easily as it does in 1st. It'll also recover from heroic angles thanks to that custom Mazda steering lock kit. But scary? No. It was just hilarious. Mad in the best possible way. Okay, it's time to go round. Oh, it's not mad it's absolutely brutal. Oh, yes! Right, come on, one last big send, let's go! Oh, what a noise! Yes! Yeah, that should have killed the noise in it, I think. Machine!