The job of preparing the MP4-22 for delivery to the Middle East falls to a small but dedicated team of crack mechanics. Most are retired race engineers from the McLaren Formula 1 team, and they’re led by Neil Trundle, former chief engineer for Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna during the dominant late 1980s. Neil is the only full-time member of the Heritage Department, which exists solely to keep the historic McLaren fleet in tip-top condition. The arrival of the MP4-12C has meant the other members of the team are now all working virtually full time to meet the demands of the programme (although we suspect that they rather enjoy bringing all the old beasts out of retirement).
Hamilton’s MP4-22, despite not moving a lightweight wheel in some four years, needed very little work on it save for the reapplication of stickers and some comprehensive checks to ensure its airworthiness. The car is stripped, examined and rebuilt, and drained of all liquid; even the fluid in the dampers has to come out. Once the car is ready, it’s handed over to Keith Holland, McLaren’s man in charge of the allocation and distribution of all race cars to the dealers. He works together with a global logistics supplier to personally deliver each car to the individual showrooms. “It’s a privilege, dealing with all these lovely old cars,” Keith says, “but it’s a bit of a juggling act. We try and do a number of cars at once. We’ve had a number of instances where the car is required within a certain time, including this one in Dubai, because of the launch of the dealership.”
At MTC, the car is carefully prepared for transport. The nosecone is removed and packed up in a crate, and the Bridgestone tyres – logos freshly repainted by Neil – are wrapped in black plastic. Then the chassis is wheeled out of the pristine corridors, into a McLaren transporter and driven the short journey to London’s Heathrow airport. Where it’s attached to a pallette. And that’s it.
“We talked about the best way to ship these things because they are museum pieces and very valuable,” Keith explains. “You can bag it up inside a crate but then nobody knows what’s inside and you don’t know if it’s treated with the same respect. We decided to put them on a pallette so people know what they’re working on.”
