Frank Stephenson, designer of the McLaren P1, is reimagining the seminal hypercar thanks to a collaboration with YouTube star Tavarish.
Freddy “Tavarish” Hernandez famously bought a P1 that had been almost destroyed during Hurricane Ian in 2022. He’s spent the past two years working to get it back on the road, documenting the experience across some 15 videos on his 3-million-subscriber YouTube channel.
Despite the P1 finally arriving at something close to working order, Hernandez is upping the ante. He’s going further than the McLaren factory ever did by creating the lightest, fastest P1 on the planet. Actually, make that the fastest McLaren on the planet; Hernandez is targeting a top speed beyond the Speedtail‘s 250 mph.
“It’s very on-brand for me to bite off more than I can chew,” he admits. “My team and I have a unique opportunity to do something really quite novel, something that the world has never seen before, because the car has already been, for lack of a better term, devalued by the flood. I mean, it was all the way underwater in salt water. We had to replace everything. So why not make my dream-spec P1?
“The P1 was the true successor to the McLaren F1, which is my money-no-object dream car. The F1 won a bunch of races, and it was the fastest naturally aspirated car in the world, and still is, and they never really set out for it to do all that. They just wanted to make the best, the lightest, most powerful car that they could at the time. Then it just happened to do all these world-beating things. So, if we focus on the ethos of less weight, more power, and include all the technology available to us now, I think we have a winner.”
“Frank’s on board and we have a lot of the OEM suppliers on board. We’re trying to make an OEM Plus version, as if the McLaren Skunk Works team got a hold of this and decided to make a top speed car.”
Stephenson is no less enthusiastic about returning to his most notable design. “This is a special moment for me—the continuation of a lifelong vision: turning bold, conceptual design projects into reality, where innovation and beauty are fused through a truly end-to-end creative process,” he says.
“To start with a customization of the P1, a car that carries such personal and professional significance, is incredibly exciting. The P1 was a standout project in my career, and returning to it now, with the freedom to explore it from a fresh perspective, feels like a fitting way to reflect the creative direction of the studio. Every design detail is being reconsidered and reimagined with today’s possibilities in mind.”
While Stephenson set his sights on the P1’s styling and aerodynamics evolution, Hernandez is laser-focused on power and weight. He opted to ditch the original car’s early hybrid system because replacing the salt-water ravaged battery pack and motor wasn’t just expensive in dollars, but also in pounds.
“We’re aiming for a 3000-lb curb weight and 1400 horsepower, and removing the hybrid battery assembly lowers the weight by about 300 pounds,” explains Hernandez. More significant weight reduction comes with the removal of the original charge coolers, using one that feeds off the air conditioning system instead.
Boosting the P1’s 3.8-liter V-8 up from 900 horses to 1400 hp, will be largely down to, er, boost. “I got in touch with the original designer of the turbos for the P1 at a company in the Netherlands called Tachyon,” says Hernandez. “And they designed turbos for me that that fit in the same housing as the stock. They put out twice the horsepower, and they sent those designs over to Mitsubishi Japan, which then made prototypes. So these aren’t turbos that we had milled, these are from Mitsubishi Japan. Fully tested, OEM quality.”
That dedication and attention to detail sum up Hernandez’s approach to the project, not to mention the rest of his well-documented builds. Yet, despite huge support from McLaren dealers, plus the input of the car’s designer, McLaren Automotive itself hasn’t been involved. “McLaren official hasn’t said anything, even though I have gotten a message from Zak Brown saying he’s rooting for me.”
Hernandez is hoping to have the car ready to display at SEMA in November. He is targeting NASA’s Cape Canaveral runway for a top speed run in 2026. After that, it will stay in his collection forever.
“This is a keeper for me,” he insists. “I enjoy the story, and there’s no way I can replicate this car. If we can pull this off and make this a car that is in competition with the world, I think that’s a pretty notable thing.”
Question: If Tavarish, Tyler “Hoovie” were both on fire… What kind of sandwich would you make?
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