The staff cafeteria at McLaren’s headquarters is kept at a slightly lower air pressure than the rest of the building to prevent the smell of food from seeping into the workshops.
Heaven forbid a member of the work force get distracted by a whiff of Cornish pasty or blood pudding and bungle the brakes on Fernando Alonso’s car for the Monaco Grand Prix.
The main “boulevard” of the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) is the first place a visitor sees when arriving at the company’s headquarters. To the right is a two-storey glass wall looking out onto an artificial lake. To the left, a long line of cars positioned in chronological order. The first is Bruce McLaren’s own 1954 Austin 7 – a car he fettled and raced when he was only 15. Beyond the Austin, are millions of dollars worth of old race cars: the Marlboro-liveried F1 car of the great champion Ayrton Senna, and his rival Alain Prost. The names painted onto the cars read like roll call at the racer’s hall of fame: Hunt, Lauda, Fittipaldi, Hakkinen, Coulthard, Hamilton, Button. There’s the GTR that won Le Mans in 1995. Beyond it, the prototype XP1 F1 LM, in the company’s trademark eye-popping Papaya Orange.
“No pictures, please,” a polite but firm voice says as you walk in. Technicians working behind glass in a laboratory-white environment are making carbon-fibre parts for next year’s Formula One cars. This is top-secret stuff.
It takes a second to realize this laboratory is actually a garage. A spotless, pristine, dust-free garage. No one should be surprised if someone were to be fired because there’s an oil spot on the white floor.
Farther along the boulevard is a trophy cabinet – trophy wall, really – running down both sides of a long hallway. Inside is enough silverware to make the masters of Downton Abbey jealous. These are the spoils of war: trophies from 182 Formula One race victories, eight Constructors’ Championships, 12 Drivers’ Championships, a win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Can-Am Championships, and three Indianapolis 500 victories.
The drivers aren’t allowed to keep their trophies. Sure, they get to hold them up at the end of the race and pop the champagne. Racing is spectacle. But then the driver must hand over the silverware, so it can be placed behind glass at the factory.
Before construction of McLaren’s new headquarters, company boss Ron Dennis made a tiny last-minute change to the dimensions of the production centre. Why did a few centimetres matter in this giant building? Apparently because Dennis didn’t want any of the square floor tiles to be cut. Inside the building, you can see that the tiles do indeed fit perfectly, edge to edge. Why anyone would be looking at the floor in a factory full of supercars, I can’t imagine.
The MTC looks like an alien spaceship. A rounded metal saucer that embedded itself deep in the English countryside. The building was designed by Sir Norman Foster and Partners and officially opened by the Queen in 2004.
The hallway McLaren employees walk through as they arrive to work is underground, all white and windowless, like something straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The hallway allows employees to cleanse themselves, leaving any outside thoughts behind. That’s the idea, anyway.
There is only one robot in the neighbouring McLaren Production Centre, where the firm builds its supercars, the P1 and the 650S. The robot’s only job is to measure things. The cars are built by human hands.
Much has been written about Dennis’s obsessive drive for perfection, his borderline OCD. I’ve never met the man. I can’t speak to his character. Having seen this place he built, in all its glorious sterile weirdness – I’m in awe.
It’s no surprise the perfectionism seeps into the company’s cars, too – sometimes to a fault. The British media criticized the MP4-12C when it was launched for being too sterile, lacking in feeling. Since then, McLaren has systematically engineered more feel and emotion into its cars. Problem solved.
Full disclosure: I’ve always wanted to visit McLaren’s headquarters, to see where the Formula One cars were built, to see a McLaren F1 LM in person. When I was 12 or 13, my family went to London on vacation. I sighed and groaned all the way through the National Gallery and the Tate and the V&A, waiting only to visit the McLaren showroom, in which a lone silver F1 supercar was on display. It was a formative experience for a young gearhead.
That early visit to McLaren was reassuring – validating, even – because I could see some grown-ups were clearly just as obsessed with cars as I was. Visiting the MTC, it was good to see McLaren hasn’t changed, and neither have I.
Like us on Facebook
Add us to your circles
Sign up for our weekly newsletter.