Meet the McLaren F1 car of 2056

t’s not real, but it should be. V12, 4WD monster is Nathan Dearsley's vision of F1's future

Four-wheel-drive. Banzai-fast. V12 engine. Less grip. If the future of F1 looks like this, count us in.This retro-liveried work of art is the doing of designer Nathan Dearsley, who has sketched out an entirely unofficial McLaren F1 car fit for the year 2056. As we say, it's not real, nor has it been commissioned or sanctioned by McLaren. Or anyone.

But you don't need an authority to tell you it looks excellent. Dearsley tells TopGear.com he's a huge Ayrton Senna fan (hence the famous colours of the legendary MP4/4) but also of the F1 cars of the Sixties, where "everything was out in the open, and you could almost see and learn how the soul of a car was put together."

He's imagined a four-wheel-drive setup to power this MP6/P - electric power for all four wheels, but a proper, full-on V12 monster powering just the rear wheels. The electricity is for traction out of slow corners, the V12 for massive amounts of opposite lock.

Of course, this being a work of fiction, there's no fictional power output. The idea, says Dearsley, is to make it faster, "but more unstable to create a level playing field for non-works vehicles... and just be damn good fun to watch."

Dearsley himself is a self-confessed science-fiction ‘nut', and has worked in games for several years, which would explain why this McLaren looks so intergalactic.

Having seen Ferrari's very own vision of the future of F1, and now a peek at a possible McLaren car, we can surmise that the future of racing will be terrifying and wonderful...