Watch Hennessey’s McLaren 600LT Take On Its 720S Big Brother in a Quarter-Mile Drag

The 600LT is fast, but the 720S is in a whole different zip code.
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Hennessey Performance Engineering took delivery of its 2019 McLaren 600LT earlier this month, thus becoming the first American customer to receive the limited edition supercar. 

On paper, the McLaren 600LT is already a quick and powerful car as it produces 592 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque in stock form from a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8. For many 600LT owners, these numbers are plenty impressive, but we think that this is just the beginning for Mr. Hennessey and his group of power hungry tuners at HPE.

And guess what? We were right.

In order to see just how fast the stock 600LT is, the boys from Houston decided to pit their new $240,000 toy against McLaren’s current flagship supercar, the 720S. In a video uploaded by HPE, from a standstill, the 710 horsepower, 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 powered speed machine gains a sizeable lead over its younger brother. As the speed increases, so does the distance between the two cars. While the quarter-mile trap speeds were not provided in the video, you can clearly see that by the end of the run, the 720S has at least two to three car lengths advantage over the Longtail. 

However, from a rolling start, the 720S’s power and 0.2-liter of engine displacement advantage over the 600LT is obvious as it rapidly accelerates from the starting line, immediately putting car lengths between itself and the 600LT over the quarter-mile. But, the good news is that with its enhanced aerodynamic tweaks over the 570S, the 600LT is able to maintain its distance with the 720S throughout the run.   

So, is the McLaren 600LT fast? Yes. Is it as fast as the 720S? No. But given the fact that HPE is known for extracting ludicrous amounts of power from high-performance engines, we’re sure that they will develop a package that will easily enable the 600LT to not only leave the 720S in the dust but also provide a similar fate to cars costing twice or even trice as much as its retail price.