Most Extreme Street-Legal Race Cars

Introducing three extreme road-legal track cars that can be driven on public roads.

What good is a track car if you can’t show it off on the roads? Well, for those looking for over-engineered performance around the track as well as the ability to then drive the car off the track, we’ve made a list of some of the most extreme street-legal track cars we can find.

Cars so extreme that you think ‘how on earth is that allowed on the road’. Cars so fast they can outpace everyone else on the circuit. Cars so ridiculously tuned and optimised for the track that makes you wonder who exactly would even want to drive them on public roads.

Caparo T1

The Caparo T1 is a British-made track car that has been designed to essentially be as close to an F1 car as possible. Featuring a carbon fibre body, loads of aero optimisations and a power to weight ratio of 1,223 hp per tonne. The all-aluminium 3.5-litre V8 produces up to 575 horsepower at 10,500 rpm and is said to produce up to 700 horsepower with methanol fuel.

At 149 mph the Caparo T1 can produce a whopping 875 kg of downforce, allowing it to stick to the ground in a similar way to a Formula One car. The only difference being that you can drive this one the road, it has two seats and there’s a ‘roof’ of sorts that can be removed. Priced at £235,000, the Caparo is more than your average track toy.

McLaren Senna GTR LM

The Senna has gone from being a road-legal car as the standard Senna, to a track-only car as the Senna GTR, and now back again with the GTR LM. It’s not quite as extreme as the Senna GTR but it is based on it, with some small changes being made in order for it to be street legal.

Although the canards are absent, each Senna GTR LM features special painted liveries that celebrate the F1 GTR and the victories McLaren achieved at the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans. These special paint jobs took hundreds of hours of hand painting each, completed by the McLaren Special Operations team.

Compared to the standard Senna, the GTR LM has a small 20bhp bump in power, higher rev limit close to 9,000 rpm, bespoke OZ Racing wheels, special twin exit exhaust and an LM-specific steering wheel. Most of these special track cars are likely being preserved in a garage, each costing over £1.1 million.

Praga R1R

Praga is a Prague-based manufacturer that is probably best known nowadays for the Praga R1, a racecar that has competed in the Dutch Supercar Challenge series and Britcar Endurance Championship. The Praga R1R is what happens when a company takes a genuine race car and tames it down enough for it to qualify for road-legal status.

Only 68 examples were made, marking their 68-year hiatus from producing a road car. Each one features a Renault Sport 2.0-litre turbocharged I4 engine, producing 330 to 390 hp which is a lot considering it weighs just 670 kg!

The R1R is said to produce more than its own curb weight in downforce meaning technically, at the right speed, the car could drive upside down. This is the real deal when it comes to track cars and if you saw one of these on the road, the response would most likely be ‘wait, is that legal?’. It was priced at $206,000 USD and went on sale in late 2015 so we imagine they have all been sold now, likely making the resale price if you wanted to purchase one much higher.

Let us know your thoughts on some of the most extreme street-legal race cars in the comments below.

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