How restoring old F1 cars helps McLaren manage its modern cost cap and staff burnout

The motorsport Triple Crown. It’s primarily a driver achievement, famously with Graham Hill the only one to have achieved it (in both Monaco Grand Prix or Formula 1 world championship format, for that matter). But, in 2023, McLaren has made it a team accolade too.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, the Woking squad adopted a special ‘Triple Crown’ livery for the Monaco and Spanish races. It split the colour scheme in three – each nodding towards the McLaren cars that have won the Monaco GP, Le Mans 24 Hours and the Indianapolis 500.

The result was somewhat forgettable viewed head on – where the F1 GTR’s black livery allowed the modern McLaren F1 team to save weight leaving more of its MCL60 running in bare carbon. But the back was something else…

This area took the papaya orange of the M16C Indycar Johnny Rutherford took to victory in the 1974 Indy 500 and combines it with the pattern applied to Alain Prost’s MP4/2 from the 1984 Monaco GP. But it’s the orange that stuns.

Autosport saw all three McLaren ‘Triple Crown’ winners before they appeared at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed – the F1 GTR (run back in period by the Lanzante team with McLaren factory support) there only on display having been untouched since its 1995 Le Mans triumph.

We were in a McLaren building so secret they’ve asked us not to reveal its name or location (although some eagle-eyed readers may recall a televised visit here with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button back in 2010).

As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, McLaren adopted a ‘Triple Crown’ livery for the Monaco and Spanish races

Photo by: McLaren

Things have to be reticent because the ‘Triple Crown’ cars are currently amongst 35 other extremely valuable machines built across the team’s illustrious history. They’ve been restored here by the eight-strong team comprising McLaren’s Heritage division, which was established in 2016. Soon its operations will move to the McLaren Technology Centre.

The Heritage team has been hard at working getting nearly 30 ex-racing cars ready to run or be displayed at Goodwood, plus the Velocity Invitational at Sonoma Racing in November. But the M16C has required the most attention.

“That’s a project that took some time,” explains Piers Thynne, the McLaren F1 team's chief operating officer. He’s been tasked by McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown with supporting its Heritage team in this special celebration year.

"All the bodywork was refurbished and repainted. And even down to having to digitally scan to create the screen – because we didn’t have the tooling for it – to get that to where it is now. It's a beautiful car" Piers Thynne on the M16C

He’s referring to the 15-month restoration project for a car that Autosport’s Goodwood report described as having a “peripatetic existence over the past 50-odd years”, with five previous owners.

“Obviously, it has quite different technology to a lot of the cars that we have now,” Thynne adds. “And we took everything back to full component parts. It’s an aluminium tub, so we refurbished everything – all the suspension, the gearbox. All the bodywork was refurbished and repainted. And even down to having to digitally scan to create the screen – because we didn’t have the tooling for it – to get that to where it is now. It's a beautiful car.

“An interesting thing – we got to the end and went, ‘where are the mirrors?’ And the answer was, ‘we haven’t got any mirrors’. So, we did some photographic analysis and [former F1 chief designer] Neil Oatley went, ‘I think they’re off a Lotus Elite road car’. So, I went looking online right away and bought them on Ebay!

“Three days later they arrived and we had to blast the chrome off them because they’re chrome on a Lotus, put them in our papaya and they’re now on a bracket on the car looking absolutely sweet. It was the strangest expenses form I’ve had to fill in! Going, ‘one pair of mirrors, purchased via Ebay’. A bit odd, but you’ve got to find a way to do these things. I don’t do that often, but it was the right way to fix the problem.”

Current McLaren F1 consultant Gil de Ferran drove the M16C up the Goodwood hill earlier this year

Photo by: James Sutton/Motorsport Images

Before current McLaren F1 consultant Gil de Ferran drove the M16C up the Goodwood hill, regular Heritage shakedown driver Rob Garofall assessed it at Wales’s Pembrey circuit.

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He recalls: “If I’m honest, it was a little bit scary! Because when the guys fired it up initially, because it’s a 1920s engine by all accounts with an enormous turbo on it, and it’s spitting and coughing and spluttering, you’re stood back and watching it all thinking, ‘blimey that looks like a bit of a scary thing’.

“And obviously it’s designed to run on an oval at 200mph, not around Pembrey. So, actually it was quite a difficult car to drive. Because you’re taking it out of its natural environment and where it should be and bringing it here.

“There’s no diff on it, so it’s a solid rear axle and therefore not particularly keen on a hairpin. It’s geared enormously long – obviously for the speeds that it would’ve run on the ovals. But it’s an incredible car and the restoration work that’s been done on it is just incredible too.”

As well as maintaining its collection of historic cars, design drawings and kit, McLaren’s Heritage department is also a useful division when it comes to certain decisions around operating the current F1 team.

This is because the Heritage team operates outside of cost cap restrictions. Therefore, mechanics can be moved across for training or even just a break from travelling on the brutally long calendar. This can be done at the end of each season, should anyone wish to be transferred.

“One of the things that we want to make sure we can do is [ensure] there are opportunities for the crews here to learn and develop and move into the cost cap and the racing team,” says Thynne.

The Heritage team operates outside of cost cap restrictions, offering respite for those travelling amid a brutally long calendar

Photo by: McLaren

“And also, vice-versa. With a very busy calendar, we want to ensure that there are opportunities for somebody that may want to take a year or two out. That there are opportunities to move left and right – creating development opportunities, training opportunities – and give career agility for our people.”

To help with this, the way McLaren’s F1, Heritage and Testing of Previous Cars teams operate are the same when it comes to running cars on track. There are also similar processes for building cars from just disassembled parts, too.

The TPC programme concerns test running permitted under F1’s rules, so long as the cars are over a year old and no more than four years old overall (2019-2021 cars are currently permitted). Current McLaren racer Oscar Piastri completed extensive TPC mileage before he joined the grid for 2023. The Australian was also doing this with his previous employer, Alpine.

"The process that we run – the race team and car build-wise – needs to be the same in TPC and Heritage" Piers Thynne

The theory is that a mechanic working for McLaren’s F1 crew but desiring a year out could be simply switched into the Heritage or TPC teams and not require any additional training. That would be beyond understanding how the relevant cars are arranged or need to be rebuilt.

“I’m really keen for just enough process that we’re really fast and efficient,” explains Thynne. “The process that we run – the race team and car build-wise – needs to be the same in TPC and Heritage.

“So, we’re doing a lot of process optimisation. How we run this side of the business, needs to be appropriate for what it is. It doesn’t need to be hard over, Formula 1 process, but it needs to be commercially sensible and safe.

“So, one of the things that the crews do, is the process by which we run job lists, communicate, plan, think – is the same. It’s so that when someone moves from here to the TPC crew, or the race to the TPC crew, or across into Heritage – the language, the process, the way we do things is all the same.

Piers Thynne (left) has been tasked with supporting the Heritage team in this special celebration year

Photo by: JEP

“That is really important for that culture of continuous improvement [too]. If somebody finds something, says ‘oh there’s a tweak we can do here’, then everyone wins. And those kinds of marginal gains for us operationally are where we’ll find performance.”

Once the McLaren Heritage department is fully established in the MTC early in 2024, McLaren fans and customers will be able to see the results of their effort on regular factory tours the team has planned. Previously these were reserved for team partners, media moments or exclusive fan offers, but there are now commercial tours available online.

Examples of McLaren’s historic collection will be on full display on the MTC’s famous forward ‘boulevard’. This runs from the factory’s main entrance almost the full length of the gigantic Norman Foster-designed building.

Cars have previously sat there, but the plan is for this soon to become more extensive. But not every car from McLaren’s long history will be displayed. This is because, despite it’s long length, the area still isn’t big enough to fit every car in. A monthly rotation policy is set to be deployed.

McLaren’s collection is also incomplete because it went through periods of disposing of its old cars back during previous management eras. Plus, in recent years McLaren has begun selling F1 machines to private customers. The team maintains and runs the cars at private tests as part of the programme.

It is however, “very strategic about what could and why [be sold]”, per Thynne. These choices are made “based on a car’s provenance and based on keeping our growing asset collection to be right to log our history”, he adds.

“One of the things that’s great is, as we reconfigure that area, and our machine shop refurbishment finishes in a few months time, that tour will be part of [the Heritage division],” concludes Thynne. “So, you’ll be able to see the Heritage and the TPC crew and it’s just all of our racing programmes all there. You’ll be able to see red-and-white cars, silver-and-black cars, chrome cars.”

Examples of McLaren’s historic collection will be on full display on the MTC’s famous forward ‘boulevard’

Photo by: McLaren