Published:
26 May 2017From the moment you first turn the 720S’s steering wheel, you realise why McLaren’s choice to stick with hydraulic steering was a good one.
At 2.5 turns lock to lock, it’s never nervous but always absolutely direct enough, plus unerringly accurate, deftly weighted and offering terrific road feel.
It sets a precedent that the rest of the 720S’s chassis duly follows. Changes to the Proactive chassis control system mean that, in the softest of the three settings (now Comfort rather than Normal, because “there’s nothing normal about a McLaren”), the ride is deft indeed: softly sprung when it needs to be but offering firmer responses as roads become more challenging, as well as excellent body control and roll resistance at all times.
Flick it through Sport and Track and you get an extra dose of control to offset some of the comfort, but there’s always enough suppleness to cope with the rigours of demanding road or track use. This is a car that shrugs off mid-corner bumps like no other.
A Porsche 911 GT3 might lift a wheel, but the 720S will accept that the track or road is different for a nanosecond and then carry on.
Still, it has usually been thus with McLarens.
The difference this time is that the 720S is happy to be driven on a circuit in a more liberal manner than, say, the 650S ever was. The 650S wanted you to drive it its way: trail the brakes to an apex, nail the throttle at it. That was fine on some corners, but not all, and meant it wasn’t as engaging as the 488 GTB, whose chassis balance gave you more options, more often.
