Taking a McLaren 570S to a Dirt Track and Learning to Turn Left

By Tony Markovich - July 22, 2016

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Despite all the commotion that’s been happening in the background at Gawker, well-known car site Jalopnik has been pushing on as usual, and is continuing to test and improve one of its newer video segments, “Neat Stuff in Cool Cars.” And in this episode, Raphael Orlove and his team tried out one of the more wild things you’ll ever see: they took a McLaren 570S to possibly the most famous dirt track in the country, Eldora Speedway.

“You will never understand a supercar until you visit its speed totally out of its environment,” Orlove begins in the video. “The trick is we’re not just going to take this to a place that a supercar doesn’t usually go. We’re going to take it to a place where a supercar has never been before.”

Eldora, also known as The Big E, is a half-mile clay track in the middle of Ohio known for being one of the toughest and most intense tracks out there. Awaiting Orlove at the Speedway was Bryan Clauson, who has raced in everything from NASCAR to Indy to midget cars. He was there to help Jalopnik handle the $240,000 car that is the performance version of McLaren’s recently launched Sport Series. It’s made out of carbon fiber and has a twin-turbo 3.8-liter V8 that puts out 562 brake horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque. Its top speed is 204 mph, sooooo yeah, it’s fast.

And as you might guess, things got a little slippery.