Britain | McLaren racing cars
Speed merchants
A Formula 1 team spreads its wings
Apr 23rd 2009 | woking
A SLIPPERY rain-soaked circuit in Shanghai did Lewis Hamilton no favours in the third Formula 1 (F1) race this season. The young British world champion, who came sixth in the Chinese Grand Prix on April 19th, nonetheless praised the efforts of his McLaren team to boost the performance of his car back at their base in Woking. Workshops elsewhere in Britain were busy too: first and second places in Shanghai went to Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber of Red Bull Racing, headquartered in Milton Keynes. Jenson Button, of Brackley-based Brawn, came third. Six of the ten leading F1 teams are based in Britain.
Motor racing is a big British success story. From a motley collection of enthusiastic racers and specialist designers, a cottage industry has arisen that is unrivalled around the globe. Some 4,500 firms are now involved in racing, sports-car engineering and related functions such as event management. Their annual turnover is reckoned to be in the region of £6 billion.
The McLaren headquarters, designed by Lord (Norman) Foster to swoop elegantly around one side of a large artificial lake, leaves visitors in no doubt as to which firm considers itself the leader of the pack. But a bit like Mr Hamilton's racing car, not all is running sweetly at McLaren.
Just before the Shanghai race Ron Dennis, who signed up Mr Hamilton when the future champion was just 13, suddenly stepped down as boss of the F1 team after 43 years in the sport. Mr Dennis, who remains group chairman, is by his own admission "not always easy to get on with". His resignation was the result, some concluded, of strained relations with the Hamilton family after the opening Australian Grand Prix. Mr Hamilton, who was eventually disqualified, was allegedly ordered to lie to race officials about an overtaking manoeuvre by another driver. Mr Hamilton has since apologised and a McLaren official has been sacked. But the team could still face sanctions when the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), holds a hearing into the incident on April 29th.
Mr Dennis decided it was time to go. Even before the brouhaha he had started to step back from running the team. He will soon be fully occupied with a project that has been bubbling away for two years: putting the McLaren badge on a new sports car to be made in a purpose-built factory employing up to 800 workers.
With Britain's carmakers in deep trouble, it might seem a curious time to start a new car firm. But Mr Dennis is betting that by the time the new McLaren sports cars go on sale in 2011, economies will be recovering. He is seeking investors prepared to put up £250m for a half-share in what will be a separately run McLaren Automotive. Mr Dennis now owns 15% of the McLaren group. The other shareholders are a Bahraini investment company (with 30%), TAG Group, a watchmaker, with 15%, and the McLaren racing team's engineering partner, Germany's Daimler group, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, with 40%.
McLaren already builds a small number of exotic cars for road use. Production of a special version of the Mercedes-Benz SLR sports car will soon come to an end with 75 limited-edition 200mph roadsters called the SLR Stirling Moss, after the legendary racing driver. They will cost £700,000 each, and look like 1950s racing cars, with two tiny windscreens.
The pretty new sports car envisaged now, codenamed P11, will be virtually a mass-market offering, in supercar terms. Costing about £100,000, it will compete with the likes of a Ferrari F430 or a Lamborghini Gallardo. Production could reach 4,000 a year, a big leap in volume for a racing-car manufacturer. And therein may lie the rub: British engineers have historically been better at designing cars than manufacturing them in any quantity.
Whereas F1 racing will provide all the marketing McLaren needs (provided the team can get back onto a winning streak), the new sports cars will still need to be ground-breaking to succeed. "Forget what you know, we will be different and do things differently," promises Mr Dennis. Competing through innovation is, they say, what drives the F1 racing spirit.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Speed merchants"
Britain April 25th 2009
Out the window
Payback time?
Conscience be your guide
Rush job
Who's nasty now?
Correction: G20 protests and the Mental Health Foundation
From the April 25th 2009 edition