You know the story of the McLaren F1 GTR: a road car developed by a racing team that never intended to take it racing, but ended up doing so anyway. And when it did, the F1 GTR beat all the purpose-built racing prototypes to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1999. But that wasn’t the only race the legendary supercar won.
The F1 GTR also won several GT championships, including the BPR Global GT Endurance Series. The series was a successor to the defunct World Sportscar Championship and was eventually recognized and renamed as the FIA GT Championship.
The BRP series started in 1994 but only awarded titles the following two seasons, and the McLaren F1 GTR won them both. Now 20 years since that second championship, McLaren released this on-board footage from the 4 Hours of Anderstorp at the Scandinavian Raceway in Sweden.
It was actually the first race a McLaren didn’t win that season, beaten to the punch by a Ferrari F40 GTE – but F1 GTRs took the next four spots in the race results. Our of 11 four-hour races that season, the F1 GTR won seven – more than enough to beat the Porsche 911 GT1 driven by Hans-Joachim Stuck and Thierry Boutsen to the title.