A trip to McLaren GT has been on the DSC’s todo list for almost two years but finally the stars aligned last week and I sat down for the first time in far too long with McLaren GT Managing Director, Andrew Kirkaldy.
McLaren GT’s headquarters, the large unit used by the Formula One team until the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) opened in 2003, isn’t far from the mothership, but McLaren GT are a standalone body, albeit with hard wired connections to McLaren Automotive.
It’s a large facility, complete with the old offices of the likes of Adrian Newey and Ron Dennis, still intact and in use, with other areas of the building currently being refurbished for a planned expansion of facilities and activities, and to accommodate an overspill of staff from the expanding McLaren Automotive arm of the parent company.
“We have taken over the facility from McLaren and it really was something of a time capsule when we arrived here. The demands of Formula One are such that the guys had to hit the ground running when they moved in to the MTC. It really felt as if someone had locked the doors in 2003 and we found it as they left it years later!”
McLaren then are now renting some space back from their partners at Mclaren GT, but that doesn’t mean that the space left for Kirkaldy and co is cramped. Far from it, the offices, design studio and workshop space give plenty of high grade facilities for the current (and some future) projects to spread their wings, both metaphorically and actually.
There are plenty of familiar faces around amongst the 70 staff now at McLaren GT too:
Ex Prodrive man Ian Ludgate is the Chief Designer with Andy Thorby, designer of the initial MP 4/12C GT3 (and prior to that the Panoz LMP07 and Lister Storm LMP) still on hand as the car and its successors, continue on the steep development curve that is 21st century GT racing.
Ex Virgo Motorsport boss Chris Warne now heads up the test team and ex Strakka Team manager Dan Walmesley is in charge of ‘Future Projects’ – of which little can yet be revealed!
“It’s fair to say that we were pretty surprised at the initial level of interest in the car, we sold and delivered 25 cars in year one (2012), then a further 15 last year.”
“We have already delivered two more for this season (the pair of cars now campaigned by K-Pax in Pirelli World Challenge) and we have orders for two more to be delivered later in the year.”
“25 cars in a first year is a big deal and we had to move fast to build them, and to support all those new customers. It was a big challenge and added to that there were the inevitable issues with any new competition car.”
“The car has though been competitive right from the off, and that’s vital for the health of this operation moving forward. We are a joint venture between the McLaren Group and CRS, and we have to make the commercial side pay. We don’t get marketing money from McLaren, that’s not part of the deal, so promoting, designing, building and supporting the cars is down to us, and so far I think we’d say that it has gone very well.”
“The cars are winning around the world, last year we had 3 Championships, were second in another 6 Championships, won 23 races and had a total of 65 podium finishes, all with customer teams.”
“That’s not to say that there weren’t difficulties, because there were. The Spa 24 Hours was a disaster because we had a problem with a manufacturing issue that emerged with a part from an external supplier.”
“In those circumstances you need to be clear with your customers where the issue was, and very clear with them what you are doing to fix it. We did all of that.”
Whilst the original car has seen some changes, in particular with regard to reliability after some early issues, the basic package moves into 2014 as a very recognisable animal “There are a few minor changes for this season, but nothing that would be too visible. The changes mainly follow those that have been made to the road car and that does include some engine work but the teams have a year to swap that out.”
The challenge that lies ahead though is one reason why the basic product has changed so little since its introduction:
“We absolutely had plans to build a GTE car but then the news broke about the changes that were coming to the GT regulations. We had a design a long way down the line, with an engine almost ready for the dyno.”
McLaren had potential customers too it seems, and in numbers! Better still several of those customers would have come from outside the current sphere of GT racing.
“With the change initially slated for 2015 though it made no commercial sense to roll out a car that could have been ruled out by new regs just a year or so later, again remember we have to make each of these projects pay, and much of the expense is at the design and development stages, not something you want to have to do twice!”
“The project was shelved but most of the basic work done looks likely to be perfectly valid for he new regs, albeit now a year later than they originally planned.”
“We will certainly have a car that will be available both in the new GT and the GT+ categories, and we aim to have the GT+ ready for 2016.”
One thing seems certain though, that car is very unlikely to be based on the original MP4/12 C, McLaren Automotive are now shifting their production to the recently unveiled, re-engineered and faster 650S. So is that what’s coming Andrew?
“We have nothing to say on that front for now, remember there are two years before the new regulations and a lot is still up for grabs.”
Time for a quick wander around the facility, the design office was abuzz with activity, but no chance to see what was actually being worked on…Hmmmm!
Down to the engineering areas and it was an immediate sea of orange, “Save for one area used by Automotive to train their dealer network the floor here is all ours.”
The first area of the workshop was dominated by a number of MP 4/12 C GT Sprint cars, “Effectively this is a track focused version of the road car and features some of the kit we use for the GT3. We build the cars up here and have around 12 already with customers.”
More sales are in prospect it seems because cars with production numbers reaching 21 were in the ‘shop.
“We also help McLaren with their ‘Pure McLaren’ programme of events where owners can bring their road cars, and these Sprint cars to a track, have a great day, enjoy the cars on a circuit and get some professional tuition into the bargain. Tim Mullen heads up that team.”
2014 is set to see such events take place at Mugello and Spa with McLaren GT also offering preparation services for the track focussed cars it is a real ‘Arrive & Drive’ experience. Events are also planned in Bahrain and in the USA.
The second part of the race shop saw a couple of GT3 cars in for upgrades plus one customer ‘Can-Am’ version of the MP4/12 C in for some special attention too (plus the curtained off ‘Special Projects’ bay.
At the very end of the workshop are the three bays reserved for the trio of factory development cars, this trio of bright orange cars have had a hectic life, development, testing, the odd race in the hands of the factory, and the odd race too as a substitute for a customer car.
“These three have covered a total of 55,000 test kilometres and the beauty of the carbon monocell chassis tech is that they still feel fresh today. There is no drop off in chassis life.”
Alongside the main workshop are the fabrication shops, machine tool workshops, sub assembly and engine shops (shared between the race operation and the R&D side of McLaren Automotive) plus hot test rigs and dynos.
It’s all abuzz with activity as the operation spools up to prepare for the coming season, stocking up the parts store and ready to bolster the effort for customer support.
“We have the capability here to do most things, design, build, fabricate, rebuild. We even write all the code for the ECUs. The new cars are built up on basic chassis supplied to us from McLaren Automotive and much of the rest is done in house here.”
“On customer support we have £2.5 million worth of parts in stock and I don’t believe we have ever let a customer down over availability of any part.”
That’s an impressive claim,and one that some other manufacturers are unlikely to be able to make with a straight face – it all seems to be part of the plan to move forward, to up skill even further and prepare for new challenges.
“We have built up quite a team here, Ian Morgan came to us having previously worked as head of Vehicles at Red Bull, Our Commercial Director is ex Xtrac, Prodrive and RML man Daryl Cozens, Tim White is ex Ilmor, Red Bull and RenaultSport and Allan Collen came to us with an impressive background at RenaultSport in customer support, his professional background is in scrutineering and that too is a very handy skill set to have here.”
The final questions for Andrew surrounded the factory driver roster. And in particular the apparent willingness of McLaren to ‘loan out’ their drivers for other duties – Hence Alvaro Parente at Ram for the ELMS and Le Mans, Rob Bell at Viper, and new for 2014 signing Kevin Estre in Porsches for some endurance races in the USA. Alex Sims has moved on to BMW for 2014 and Adam Carroll has not been retained for this season.
“Why not? We aren’t racing there against our customers and the most important thing for a professional driver is to keep race sharp. We won’t be fielding McLaren factory cars any time soon. I fail to see how that can be a good idea for the customer base, to race all season, arrive at the biggest and most important races of the year and then find themselves up against a factory effort.”
There’s one other factory driver to talk about too though – Kirkaldy himself dusted off the overalls for a run at the Bathurst 12 Hours in Tony Quinn’s brand new GT3 McLaren in a run that very nearly saw the car win the race after an epic final stint from Shane Van Gisbergen.
“What a race eh? The other three drivers had never driven the car and I hadn’t driven the track, and believe me it’s an awesome and intimidating place, super quick and very technical.”
“That’s a race that is definitely going places and for us it was great, the Dealership in Australia really got behind us and behind the event. It is going to grow in importance for sure.”
