Traction control is included as a concession to drivability – ”a sort of safety measure” – but “this is a little bit more brutal,” Lanzante says.
Although the three Championship cars were not originally in the plan, Lanzante is firm in his commitment to building just 14 TAG Turbos in total. He is of course limited by the number of engines available – and has purchased one extra as an “insurance policy for everybody” – but would not press the engine back into production.
Lanzante says: “You could remake that engine, remake the castings and all of that. But a lot of people who’ve bought this, it’s not about lap times. This isn’t that.
“This is: you are driving a beautiful car, and you’re driving a car that a Formula 1 driver has campaigned in a Formula 1 race week. That’s the special thing. That is what most of the people have bought this for. How many people would be able to buy a [McLaren] MP4? There’s a few, but how many people would be able to get in and drive it? Very few.
“I could remake it, but it wouldn’t have the same soul to it. It’s the fact that it’s an original engine. It’s that we borrowed the original car from McLaren and scanned it. If I knocked out a load more of these, there’d be no point.”
The TAG 911 was “the hardest” project ever undertaken by Lanzante, he says.
So how to follow it up? “The truth is, I don’t know.”
Lanzante elaborates: “A lot of people have said: ‘You’ve done a Porsche project. Are you going to do another?’ It’s a saturated market. I want to lead with something new, not just follow what everybody else is doing. I’m not knocking anyone: I don’t want to be just another. I want to stand on my own.”
But days after our chat, Lanzante’s team makes a big statement.
One of the other stars of the Festival of Speed was the Red Bull RB17, an Adrian Newey-designed track weapon packing an 1184bhp hybrid V10.
