Watch Jim Pace Hammer A Brutally Fast McLaren M8 Can-Am Car Around Road Atlanta – Awesome!


Watch Jim Pace Hammer A Brutally Fast McLaren M8 Can-Am Car Around Road Atlanta – Awesome!

Of all the iconic cars and names that emerged from the awesome era of Can-Am road racing the McLaren name and the M8 car may stand atop the heap. The McLaren M8 was run in various versions from its introduction in 1968 through the end of the 1971 season. In 1972 the McLaren works team switched to the M20 chassis but that’s irrelevant when we start talking about the video below. You are going to see our in-house road racing boss Jim Pace hammer the daylights out of a later McLaren M8 around Road Atlanta. This car is being driven seemingly has hard as it would go and you can tell by the absolutely incredible acceleration and the fact that he is passing cars like the rest of them have run out of gas.

If there was an under-sung hero during the McLaren years of domination in Can-Am it was the ex-drag racer George Bolthoff. He was the engine builder for these cars and the motors were both reliable and incredibly powerful. Bolthoff was one of the best Top Gas drag racers of his day and that experience created a dream scenario for him when building the big block Chevy road racing engines that powered these beautiful machines.

Outside of the obvious stuff like the facts the car is light, crazy powerful, and perfectly capable of blowing the tires off the back at any time, there’s another element here to pay attention to. Road Atlanta is a really, really tough place to be fast at because as you will see, runout room is at a minimum and there’s LOTS of concrete ready, willing, and able to eat up a race car. Obviously when you have skills like Pace and the confidence of a car owner and crew behind you laying the pedal flat is what you do, but to mere mortals like us, this is awesome to watch.

Press play below to see Jim Pace wheel a McLaren M8 around Road Atlanta HARD!


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