Five Formula 1 cars, spanning three decades of McLaren racing history, are heading to market through British dealer Tom Hartley Jnr. The collection includes machines driven by Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, and reigning world champion Lando Norris. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says the cars shouldn’t just sit in storage. The accountants probably agree.
Two of the five are McLaren MP4/6A chassis from 1991, both powered by Honda’s naturally aspirated V12. Chassis 04 was Gerhard Berger’s ride to a second-place finish at the San Marino Grand Prix that year, and Senna tested it extensively. Chassis 07 carried Berger through four grands prix, including Silverstone and Hockenheim. Both have lived in McLaren’s collection since retirement. Neither has been offered publicly before.
The modern end of the lot is just as loaded with provenance. A 2012 MP4/27A driven by Button at several races, including Abu Dhabi, also saw seat time from Hamilton. McLaren has committed to a full restoration before delivery, which tells you something about the condition of cars that have been gathering dust rather than generating revenue.
Then there are the Norris cars, and these carry a different kind of weight. The 2021 MCL35M, chassis 01, helped Norris collect podiums at Imola, Monaco, and Monza. It runs the current-era hybrid V6 powertrain, making it one of the few modern turbo-hybrid F1 machines to reach private hands.
The 2023 MCL37A, chassis 03, delivered Norris second-place finishes in Singapore and Japan before serving as a test mule. Its logbook reads like a casting call: Oscar Piastri, Mick Schumacher, Pato O’Ward, Valtteri Bottas, and Brad Pitt all drove it during filming prep for Apple’s F1 movie.
Norris winning the 2025 World Drivers’ Championship makes the timing of these sales feel less like housekeeping and more like cashing in at peak value. A car associated with a reigning champion fetches a very different price than one linked to a promising talent who hasn’t yet delivered.
Brown’s public framing, that the cars deserve better than storage, is polished corporate language for a decision rooted in harder math. McLaren’s financial pressures are well documented. The racing operation, while competitive again on track, still operates within tighter margins than its rivals at Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull. Selling heritage hardware is not unprecedented in F1, but it is usually a sign that the present needs funding more than the past needs preserving.
Tom Hartley Jnr is no stranger to this tier of the market. The dealer specializes in the kind of transactions where prices are discussed privately and buyers are vetted before they ever see the car. No asking prices have been published for any of the five McLarens.
The 1991 cars will attract a specific kind of collector, someone drawn to the Senna era and analog machinery. The Norris cars appeal to a newer generation of wealth, buyers who watched the Netflix era unfold and want a piece of the sport’s current chapter.
McLaren has always been protective of its racing archive. That five cars are leaving the vault at once suggests this is less about philosophy and more about liquidity. Whether more follow depends on how deep the financial pressure runs, and how quickly these sell.
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