IN AN Adelaide Motorsport Festival first, all eyes turned to the McLaren M8f Can-Am car as it made its debut at the event this weekend.

Dutton Motorsport are running the vehicle, with Ben Henson behind the wheel of the 800kg monster – which produces a gob smacking 900bhp.

Henson explained that the car has a rather unique racing history.

“It’s a 1972 Interseri car, like a Can-Am car but from the European series. It was driven by Theodore ‘Teddy’ Pilette for the VDS team. It was reasonably successful until Porsche brought out the 917,” he said.

He explained that the response to the 917 in the day was to fit the car with a twin turbo engine.

“Unfortunately the gearbox and all the other components couldn’t keep up with the horsepower so they put it back to normally aspirated.”

Henson said the sensation of actually driving the car was something else.

“I’ve driven it three times, on Wednesday we tested at Tailem Bend, but still its 900bhp and 1000 foot pound of torque. I’m still in shock, when I change a gear and press the throttle, it’s brutal, we’ve nicknamed it ‘The Meataxe’ which will give you an idea of what it is like.” Henson said.

“Jason White (seven time Targa Tasmania Champion) a friend of mine drove it over at Baskerville Raceway in a race with myself in a Lola, and Josh Kean in his Benetton. A six-lap race and we swapped lap records between us on every lap,” Henson said, when reminiscing on his trip to Tasmania earlier in the year.

“This track is not that conducive to go real fast, I mean Tim Slade and these guys can but I’m just trying to keep it all in one piece,”

Henson has not previously been to the Motorsport Festival and ironically spoke of reluctance by the team to attend the event – though that has since changed.

“Tim’s been trying to get us here for a few years now and we’ve been reluctant because we weren’t quite sure of the demographic of the track, what it was going to be like for our cars,” he said.

“But now I’ve got here, it’s a bloody good festival! It’s great, even on the Thursday, it looked like it was building from there. Friday got better and today (Saturday) is unbelievable.

“I was lucky enough to drive the 962 into the street party last night, I’ve never taken a Porsche LeMans car to dinner before. The crowd was great last night, seems everyone gets around it!”

WORDS: Dan McCarthy
IMAGE: Adelaide Motorsport Festival