Yahoo Autos McLaren has a top-secret Heritage center. We went there.
When McLaren said to me “we’ll see if we can get you down to the Unit as well” after spending some time with them at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, I was a bit stunned.
I remember hearing about that place as a kid. It was like the car world’s Atlantis – a mythical place that existed only in folklore. Pictures of it were rare, solid information even rarer. There’s no way it could possibly exist in real life. Except it does. And I’ve been.
It might as well not exist, though. I’m not allowed to divulge where it is, and when the team finally passed on its exact location so I could get there, Google Maps got confused – the papaya team’s partner inadvertently doing its bit to keep Formula 1’s best-kept secret under wraps.
I eventually found my way though, and when I arrived, I wasn’t met by much – a parking lot full of generic daily drivers outside an unassuming warehouse-like structure. Its front door and corridors gave the impression that the place hadn’t been touched since the ’80s, but I wasn’t here to survey the property. What was contained within the walls was what I was itching to see, and good lord was it something…
“Welcome to Unit 2,” I heard as I stepped into the building’s main space, a greeting that was followed by a laugh, my face obviously saying more than enough as I struggled to remember how to speak actual words. As soon as you walk in, there’s history everywhere you look – the sheer magnitude of what McLaren has done over the years hits you like a punch in the face. It was a fitting coincidence that I was taking all of this in on Bruce McLaren’s birthday, too.
An ex-Alain Prost MP4/2 greeted me as I walked in; steeds once helmed by the likes of Mika Hakkinen, Niki Lauda, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, and Lewis Hamilton caught my eye next and there was a rack containing more than 30 other priceless examples of McLaren’s Formula 1 pedigree as well.
Head up to the building’s second story and there’s six more cars seemingly sleeping under black shrouds, and even a kart once driven by Hamilton along with bodywork and seats from aforementioned machines being attended to on the shop floor.
Unit 2 was once where long-time McLaren boss Ron Dennis stashed away retired racing cars and equipment when they reached the end of their competitive lives, away from prying eyes, never to be seen again. As you’ve probably gathered by now, it still kind of serves that purpose today, but it’s primarily the home of McLaren’s burgeoning Heritage department – something that’s far from your typical archive. It’s a living, breathing creature, with everything in constant rotation and kept in running order.
“That’s what this storage facility is used for – we swap [cars] in to keep that story alive all the time,” McLaren’s chief operation officer Piers Thynne tells RACER.
Much like the Formula 1 team itself, McLaren Heritage is thinking several months – and in some cases, years – ahead.
“For example, we are preparing our [1974 Indianapolis 500-winning] Indy car that we ran at Goodwood for anniversary events next year, so that’s already in pieces and the engine’s away in America getting rebuilt,” Thynne explains. “All the cars in here are in a rotating plan, which is three years ahead, where we ensure they’re not degrading.
“We pull out between six and eight cars a year, fully strip, service, fire up, check – and once you’ve done that [with all of them], you go around again. So the maintenance of the assets is hugely important and that’s a rolling three year program.”
The service plan of these cars is a world away from the sort that’s included with the warranty of your road car; and it’s a process made even more tricky by the fact that racing cars are effectively disposable tools with short shelf lives.
“Keeping things that are designed to have a year’s life going longer-term is very complicated, so we apply all current Formula 1 servicing standards,” Thynne says. “They’re exactly the same here. There’s no difference and all build processes are exactly the same.
An MP4/2B hides behind an MP4/25.
“There is no strategy inside current Formula 1 for heritage thinking in the future, because it’s not what matters. When the output of Formula 1 happens, there’s a huge amount of information exchange from those that are inside the [cost] cap to the team that is outside of the cap – idiosyncrasies, running methods, specifics in procedures, anything different, anything weird – to make sure that that’s documented as that continues to run inside heritage.”
That knowledge is vital, because many of these still require multiple people just to get them going.
“The older red and white cars, especially if they’re Cosworth cars, you can get away with just a couple of people on them,” explains Gary Wheeler, a McLaren veteran who got his start working with Prost in 1984 after a stints with the Fittipaldi and ATS teams, and who on the day of our visit is fine-tuning MP4/2A-01 driven by Lauda in 1984.
“Other cars, like the Vodafone cars, you need a small army to run them with all the technology and the hydraulics and the computers and everything talking to one another. So as it progresses and gets more technical, the personnel increases.”
Thynne adds that earlier cars that can be easily preheated and started with a battery are relatively easy to run, but for the more recent cars, maintaining a strong relationship with Mercedes – McLaren’s engine supplier from 1995-2014 (being works partner for much of that time) and from 2021 to the present day – has been crucial. Mercedes’ UK-based F1 engine operation accompanies McLaren at all of its Heritage tests and events, and like McLaren itself, treats the whole exercise as if it were a real grand prix.
“Mercedes comes whenever we run the cars,” Thynne says. “We need to ensure that the on-car systems are maintained in exactly the same way as we would as it ran in period, and Mercedes are observing in exactly the same way as they would in period.”
When it comes to driving, it would be safe to assume that the cars are coddled. But Mika Hakkinen – who drove his 1999 championship-winning MP4/14 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier this year – tells RACER that there are no such restrictions, although respect for a car’s age and history means they’re naturally looked after anyway.
“Funnily enough, there’s no rules from the team,” he says. “They don’t say ‘slow down’ or ‘go slow’ or nothing! There’s no rules, but we’re all grown-ups and we understand this is a show for the fans to see these beautiful cars, so you don’t have to go a thousand miles per hour.
“You can just run a bit lower gear. If you get more RPM from the engine it sounds great, and that’s the idea. The temptation was there to really put the foot down but I knew… you can’t do that.”
Wheeler goes on to explain that the cars, in fact, need to be driven fast in order to function properly – even if they’re vintage vehicles.
“We’re quite lucky because they’re not pushed to the limits like they were when they were racing, so they will go on longer before service,” he says. “But at the same time, these cars are designed to go quick; nothing else. They don’t really work unless they’re honking on a bit.
“In fact, they’re pretty dodgy when people are trying to go round and wave to people. They need to be moving pretty rapid to come alive and work properly.”
The cars run often, because one freedom that the Heritage division has that the F1 team doesn’t, is testing. Thynne says that they hit the track “about every six weeks” because “you can’t prove that a car is right unless you run it at speed”
McLaren Heritage’s test track of choice is the 1.456 mile Pembrey circuit in south west Wales, which McLaren has used for testing since the days of Senna and Prost.
McLaren’s F-duct was banned after the 2010 season, but it lives on in the Heritage Unit.
Nowadays though, it could be described as the Unit 2 of race tracks because much like McLaren Heritage’s batcave, it’s an old, anonymous place that doesn’t fit modern F1’s glamorous image. It does, however, do the job of allowing McLaren to make sure its priceless relics remain in running order, with Heritage tester Rob Garofall on hand to do the driving.
“Going into Europe would be a bit impractical and because what we actually just need is ‘a track’, we don’t need any of the gloss or glamor,” Thynne explains. “Pembrey’s near, they’re okay… obviously these car’s aren’t quiet – that’s why we go to Pembrey, we have a fantastic relationship with them.
“We could pay £50,000 a day and go to Silverstone, or we could pay considerably less than that and go to Pembrey and you’d achieve the same thing. You can run at speed, it’s safe… it works for us.”
Much of McLaren’s historic running occurs with customers – a number of McLaren’s grand prix cars have entered private hands in recent years, and if you want one yourself, Thynne says that: “there are cars in the open market, it’s not a huge circle, and you can talk to us about cars that might be available and others are available through known dealers who are very much linked indirectly with us.”
Renowned classic and performance car dealer Tom Hartley Jr is part of that circle, having sold a number of McLaren grand prix cars in recent years. A number of historically significant McLarens have passed through Hartley’s hands, including James Hunt’s championship-winning M23 – his first McLaren grand prix sale – right the way through to an MP4-27 from 2012. He’ll only deal with race-winning cars, though.
“Some people want to buy a grand prix car just to experience themselves, so they’re not as fussy about its race history,” he says. “I only focus on grand prix winning cars because for the history of the car – you really want a car where you can say ‘this won Monza’ or ‘this won Spa’. If it won a grand prix with a world champion, then that’s a different level again. There’s only so many of those.”
One car in Hartley’s current inventory is MP4-22-01, the car that Hamilton took to the first two of his 103 grand prix victories, in Canada and the United States 16 years ago, as well as another win in the hands of Alonso later in the year.
“It’s hard to really describe the importance of that car,” he says. “To buy a grand prix-winning car is pretty special, to buy a grand prix-winning McLaren is very good, to be able to buy a car that the greatest driver of all time – which undoubtedly Lewis is today – and then to be topped off, apart from him having other podiums in that car, Fernando Alonso also won in the same chassis.”
While the market for yesteryear’s F1 machines is growing and more and more cars enter the open market, McLaren remains abreast of everything going on with its cars.
“We are constantly analyzing what the cars are doing in the world of privateers,” says Thynne. “What we want to ensure is that the provenance of cars is maintained and we’re supporting each other. So that’s sharing engineering data or sharing ideas, or parts to ensure all historic McLarens are running and in good order.
“The phone rings on a daily basis going ‘do you have one of these?’ or ‘I’m restoring this’, and we always want to help to ensure that the provenance of a McLaren is kept absolutely as it should be, and with cars that want to run, we try to do our utmost to unlock any barriers to help that happen.”
McLaren’s regular running of historic F1 cars with customers has opened up continued development avenues, too. Cars that may be a decade old, or even older, aren’t just restored to running order, they’re still being improved upon.
“A customer we ran at Pembrey a few weeks ago was seriously struggling with heat shield durability,” Thynne explains. “At the kind of events that he was doing, short run track days, Goodwood Festival of Speed, that kind of thing, the heat soak was much worse than you’re able to manage in a Formula 1 event.
“Looking back when the car was in period, we used to give it a set of new heat shields every event. What we wanted to do was take a 2006 set of heat shields and take 2022 composite technology, and marry the two together. The parts would look identical, but the base material is the latest material.
“They’re exact identical replicas, but you’re able to apply modern technology to a different solution that we only found when we started to run the car.”
Wheeler adds that by continuing to develop older cars using lessons learnt in the years since, the race team’s staff benefit as well.
“If we knew what we know now of technology, we’d have made those heat shields back in time like we are now,” he says. “It’s a learning platform for mechanics, people, and components and materials. It’s still going on.”
The heat shielding solution has since been preemptively applied to other cars from the late 2000s and early 2010s, including one that was recently sold. To the untrained eye, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but that’s key to the process. Function is important, but so is form.
“A lot of stuff on the chrome cars [that] we’ve had fail, we can actually make even better now, because the technology’s moved on so much to what it was 10 years ago,” says Ben Dunmore, a build and test technician for McLaren Heritage. “We can make it better. We’re not going to change the appearance of the car, but the actual workings of it, we can make better.”
Thynne reveals that some of the older machines have also been converted to run on modern electronics to counter other potential risks that sometimes arise.
“The most important aspect of heritage is understanding what’s going on inside the engine,” he says. “So with our ‘80s cars we’ve occasionally had to go to a modern electronics system to run them safely, so you’re running risk mitigated as opposed to risky.”
Some customers refuse modifications though and as such don’t run their cars on-track (even though they remain functional). Some go as far as to keep their cars’ patina and battle scars to maintain their individual character.
“I had a long discussion with a customer asking ‘what would you like to do, because it’s faded?’ and he said ‘don’t touch it!’,” Thynne says. “Many of the customers are really really keen to have a car that is very clean, very smart, but has some patina, has stone chips as if it’s run, or has faded paintwork, because that’s the reality of a historic racing car.”
That maintains the car’s character and shows its unique individuality, but it also saves McLaren the painful job of repainting a car with a complex aerodynamic profile with the multi-layered chrome paint finish – an extremely intensive and difficult process.
“One of the significant complexities of chrome paint – and I’m so glad we don’t do it now – is if the customer had said ‘could you repaint it?’, you’d have to repaint everything because you can’t color match it.”
Certain other things simply can’t be changed. Despite streamlining processes and making things simpler, each car, regardless of what it is, needs period computing power to merely get it going. That means that also hiding in Unit 2 is an aging laptop stockpile to compliment the car collection.
“You need a computer of that iteration,” Thynne says. “So the combination of our thinking and Mercedes’ thinking… we have tidied it up, because it was written by experts for that moment in time and you need to standardize things. We’re taking a systemized approach to it, but you need to run it on a period computer.”
The theme of keeping one eye on the future while preserving the past carries on with spares, too. Everywhere you look around Unit 2 are countless labeled boxes containing parts for every car McLaren has ever produced, while upstairs are more boxes filled with meticulous session reports and rolls and rolls of paper design drawings.
The paper drawings were phased out a few years ago, and all existing hard copies up to that point have since been digitized. A sustainable approach has also been taken to the parts haul to stop the decades of inventory from getting out of control while enabling continued access to whatever might be needed.
Some MP4/23 bodywork waits for its next day in the sun.
“The quantity of parts is significant, so we have an archiving policy at the end of it, because if you didn’t you literally would own every metal-clad building in the south of England with the amount of parts,” Thynne says. “So we take a sensible sustainability approach on the tooling. We recut tools where it’s possible to reuse the raw material, and we sensibly dispose and ensure that we can maintain the cars.
“We build all four chassis into full states, give them a spares package, then take a pragmatic approach to what’s left. And it’s really important to do that otherwise you take this huge burden and carry it forward.
“What we’ve been doing over the last couple of years in this building is making sure we’re carrying that policy forward but also tidying up the legacy and what we will continue to use this area for storage.
“We’re trying to be sustainable, we’re trying to keep the assets alive, and we’re trying to keep something that’s manageable. It’s all bound into that strategy. If you’ve built all four cars and you’ve got some spares, you don’t need the tooling, because you have the digital representation of all the tools, so you can make the tooling again if you need to.
“The cost to keep that tool in case in 14 years time you might need to remake that part… it’s much more cost-effective to scrap all the tooling, recycle it, and if you need a part, remake the tool and remake the part.
“With modern manufacturing techniques, in some cases we can be quite creative. If you only need to make one, you can reverse engineer it.”
This embracing of team heritage is something that would have been unthinkable at McLaren as recently as a decade ago, but it’s one of several major changes brought about by Zak Brown since he became CEO of McLaren Racing in 2018.
“In the early days, Bruce and those guys were flat-out, worked and did everything. They did Can Am and IndyCar racing because it was big money and it paid for the Formula 1. That’s why they did it,” says Wheeler. “They weren’t thinking about history and keeping these cars then, they were doing a job and then they just moved onto the next car and the next design.
“It’s great that Zak is interested and loves all this stuff, because when we first came here, there were cars scattered around everywhere and nothing happened with them at all. They hadn’t turned a wheel for years. But slowly but surely, it’s nice to see them come back to life.
“They’ll all be done eventually, there’s just an order of when to do them. To finally see them come back and go round a circuit again is amazing.”
As the company wraps up its 60th anniversary year, Thynne believes that looking back is a key part of helping the race team move forward once again.
“In our 60th anniversary year, it’s probably the best way to put context around this: We are hugely driven to improve the performance of our Formula 1 team and continue our climb up the grid,” he says. “But you have to acknowledge the legacy of our past, the huge amount of success that we have had, the engineering development that has gone into all that, and keep it running so any member of the team is always able to look over their shoulder and just pause and consider what they’re a part of.
“Although we’re a hugely forward-thinking, driven, high-performance team, you have to acknowledge that you’re continuing to build a legacy that’s 60 years old.”
And while the Heritage Division’s purpose might be to honor the past, it’s extremely conscious of the future as well.
Cars are constantly rotated through the workshop to keep the entire collection in running order.
“In the short-to-medium term, it is absolutely possible to continue into the future, certainly with our extending contract with our PU partner,” Thynne says, reiterating the importance of McLaren’s relationship with Mercedes.
“The relationship with your engine partner is key. In a few weeks’ time we’re running multiple hybrid cars, and it’s just the same – we do the chassis, Mercedes supports the power unit and the battery. They bring that, we bring the car, we marry them together and monitor the systems in exactly the same way, and they continue to run.
“The strategy will continue to run in a collaborative fashion because it’s important that the cars are kept in running order for our history and legacy, but also the value of them is maintained if they are runners.
“I can’t speak for 20, 30, 40 years’ time, but our intent is that we will keep this alive because it’s a hugely important part of what we do. It’s important that we add a hybrid era onto that.
“At our 75th anniversary, it would be great to have the next era of cars represented, and we have every intent to continue to do that.”
As for the future of the fleet itself, the next cars to join the Heritage collection will be the 2021 cars, which will fall into the division’s remit on January 1 after they’re done with being the race team’s TPC – Testing Of Previous car – machine, and cease to be relevant to the race team’s activities.
“The current Formula 1 car will be moved into an archive and falls out of the cost cap as you roll into next year,” Thynne explains. ” The Formula 1 team keeps two year’s worth inside the facility, and that’s for two reasons: The TPC program, but also from a cost cap perspective, for inventory, if you can carry something over from one year to another, you don’t have to pay for it again. So that is economically efficient if parts have enough life. So up to two years stay in F1, then after that they come over to Heritage.
“We have ‘in-cap thinking’ and ‘out-of-cap thinking’. Out-of-cap thinking is TPC and Heritage, so that is how we actually segment it from a management and inventory perspective.
“Formula 1 is always the priority from a performance and cost management perspective, and occasionally where it’s carried over, we would actually buy new for the TPC car because you’re buying out of the cost cap for that.”
Just before I left Unit 2, I got a glimpse of another quartet of championship-winning cars, which were being packed away for the Velocity Invitational event which will take place at Sonoma Raceway on November 10-12: MP4-23A-05 that Hamilton drove at the 2008 Brazilian grand prix to clinch his first championship crown; MP4/14A-04 that Hakkinen won the 1999 Japanese grand prix in to lock in his second title; MP4/6-10 driven by Ayrton Senna in his third and final championship season; and M23-5 that Emerson Fittipaldi drove in McLaren’s first drivers’ and constructors’ title-winning season in 1974. I then headed over to McLaren’s famed (and much less secret) headquarters, the McLaren Technology Centre, where McLaren Heritage will be moving to next year.
Some of the brand’s greatest hits are already housed at the MTC, including the company’s 1995 Le Mans-winning F1 GTR; the prototype of its road-going offspring, the F1 LM; and yet more grand prix cars, both on the famous ‘Boulevard’ and in secret corridors hidden deep in the the building.
But as incredible as MTC is, it’s something of a known quantity, and as such it didn’t leave as much of a mark on me as Unit 2, the mythical, non-existent building that is in fact a real place.
