I was fortunate to be invited to McLaren Technology Center in Surrey in the UK with a group of folks from Founders Forum as part of the event. We met McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt, and Chief Innovation Officer Geoff McGrath and spent the first part of our day at the center.
I was always a McLaren fan, there is something about that car, from its legacy in Formula 1, to the way it looks, sounds and feels sitting in one. Really, it’s so beautiful it’s painful. But look, many people are McLaren fans, I’m not unique by any means being yet another one. Even car collector and comedian Jay Leno promoted Mclaren by visiting their technology center and publishing it on his popular YouTube show Jay Leno’s Garage, as well as recently owning their “Ultimate Series” P1 – first in America.
McLaren was originally founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, who passionately led a team who started winning Grand Prix racing in 1968, having repeated success in some important races such as the Can-Am race. Bruce McLaren sadly died in a testing accident in 1970, and McLaren team (who was a small one at the time, only ~25 drivers) took over and was able to win their first Formula One constructors’ championship in 1974. Over the years, McLaren had some of the most legendary drivers in the history driving it and winning races – drivers such as Niki Lauda (see below picture) and Ayrton Senna..
In 1992, McLaren had its first attempt at a production car with the McLaren F1, a three seat car, where the driver is located in the middle on its own, and it was fast. The F1 had a V12 and could product over 600 brake horsepower and would get to 65 mph in 3 seconds. This is early 90s we’re talking about, and for comparison Audi R8 which is their flagship sport car gets to 65 mph from 0 in 3.2 seconds.
Ever since the F1, and many years after – in 2009 McLaren revealed the design of its second production car, the 12C which came to market in 2011. The 12C was the beginning of an incredibly exciting new line of production cars, inheriting the magic started with Bruce McLaren back in the 60s, and all the way to 50 years of experience with winning Formula 1 racing with legendary drivers – cars such as P1, 650S, and recently 675 LT and the 570s. McLaren’s methodology is that production cars are broken out to 3 groups, “Sports series”, the “Super series” and “Ultimate series”.
There is a lot more to tell about McLaren, but the purpose was to provide a brief glance into why I’m not alone or unique being passionate about this company and their cars.
ButI was wrong thinking that McLaren wins because it’s an incredible car company. McLaren wins because they never focused about building the next best car, bur rather on long term innovation and research that can scale to multiple lines of products that are determined to be best in their field — cars included.
Introducing McLaren Technology Center, located on a gorgeous 500,000 m² site with 4 buildings (see pictures below), one of them dedicated for research called McLaren Applied Technologies. I met Geoff McGrath, Chief Innovation Officer who joined early when the team consisted of 3 people, bringing 20 years of experience to join hands with McLaren pursue of groundbreaking conceptual design, development and engineering. Geoff talked about McLaren for 20 minutes before he said “cars” for the fist time; it was one of the most inspiring talks I’ve heard, helping me understand the real secret behind McLaren. It is truly a company bringing a unique volume of soul and history, with laser focus on technology and innovation — how to win the bigger companies without being the biggest. McLaren perfected the notion of analyzing the intersection of human body behavior with other physical objects, researching what separates a winning behavior from a failing one. And let me tell you, the sky is truly the limit; McLaren is partnering with market leaders of many fields to try and re-think together about how to do things in a new and better way, whether that’s how to drill oil without risking life, optimizing airplanes landing process, how to better operate in surgery, ride a bicycle – and last but not least – driving supercars. Here is a video on YouTube about Geoff you may like speaking about data driven design.
I will leave you with some pictures I received approval to take, as most of the center is prohibited from using your mobile phone, and I encourage you to re-think about your own business and why you should win; probably not because of “what you do”, but rather “why you do it”. I also want to thank George Farquhar from McLaren who hosted us during this unique day.
The new McLaren P1 GTR
McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt 
Legendary Nike Lauda’s McLaren
McLaren Technology Center in Surrey at the UK
Jay Leno Garage – getting the P1 video