Forty-two years on, the McLaren MP4/1 is still considered one of Formula 1’s most influential cars, as it was the first to run a carbon fibre chassis, an innovation that has vastly improved the safety of motorsport.

And now, our team has become the first to use recycled carbon fibre (rCF) on an F1 car, an innovation that aims to lower the carbon footprint of the car manufacturing process and reduce resource usage. Circular economy is a key pillar of our sustainability strategy, and this is the latest major step in our ambitious long-term goal to research and develop a fully circular F1 car.

Many outside of McLaren were initially sceptical of the MP4/1’s carbon fibre chassis, which was designed and developed by our then Technical Director, John Barnard. The chassis was developed with the help of an American company called Hercules Aerospace, which had built rocket parts for NASA.

NASA isn’t involved in our latest carbon fibre innovation, but it is possible that the rCF we use could have previously been used in building a rocket ship.

Let us explain…

We’ve linked up with a unique and innovative company called V Carbon. Using cutting-edge, first-of-its-kind technology, we collaborated to source and manufacture recycled carbon fibre. It will be trialled on the cockpit branding panels of Lando and Oscar’s cars at the US Grand Prix in Austin, replacing the dynamic branding panels.

“We're using them on non-structural, non-safety critical parts to prove that it works,” says Krzys Kaczmarski, Senior Sustainability Manager. “This will prove that it's fit for purpose and that it is good enough to be used on a Formula 1 car.”

V Carbon has supplied us with the recycled material, which is waste carbon fibre from production in other industries. As we expand our use of rCF, this material could come from any number of previous lives: one of our racing cars, a fighter jet, a road car, a wind turbine blade… Or, maybe, just maybe, a rocket ship.

Inside the process

Once delivered, the carbon fibre is stored in a freezer at the McLaren factory, protecting its shelf life and keeping it in prime condition. It’s removed to defrost ahead of the laminating process, before a mould is used to produce the shaped part. The mould is then coated in a release agent to ensure the laminate doesn’t stick to it during the curing process.

The first layer of carbon fibre is then applied to the mould, with further layers following depending on the size of the job. Essentially, you're using several thin and flexible sheets to build up the thickness in order to make a rigid component. A front wing, for example, would require more layers than the smaller cockpit branding panels.

Using a vacuum bag, a debulk is completed between each layer to suck the air out, consolidating the carbon fibre layer onto the mould and ensuring there aren’t any gaps between the layers and the mould. 

This process is then repeated, with further layers and debulks completed, ahead of bagging. This involves covering the carbon fibre in release film - which prevents the resin from sticking to the bagging materials - and a breather – a highly-porous material that allows the gases in the laminate to be drawn out via the vacuum.

A vacuum bag is used again before it is put into the autoclave, which applies high pressure to force the layers together.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the recycled carbon fibre closely matches the properties of regular carbon fibre, despite going through the recycling process. “This is really, really impressive,” says Jacob Tidy, Composites Apprentice. This project is Jacob’s final one as part of his apprenticeship with McLaren. He took it on out of interest in the new material and was responsible for manufacturing the rCF component.

“This unlocks the potential to use it in other areas of the car, considering that the mechanical properties are near enough the same as normal carbon fibre.

“The feedback has been really good so far. I’ve had fellow employees coming over to see what the difference is between them, and everyone seems really impressed so far. It's cool to be one of the first people to work on this project, and it will be really interesting to see how far it takes us.”

To further improve sustainability during the process, the team have been trialling bio-based vacuum bags, which, if successful, would be a considerable improvement on the current system, where several single-use bags are disposed of during the process.

The logic behind the decision and its long-term implications

Manufacturing an F1 car is one of the most significant contributing factors to our carbon footprint. So, making this process more sustainable is one of our biggest challenges and most important focuses. Two fairly simple statistics can demonstrate why this move could prove to be such a ground-breaking one…

Compared to standard carbon fibre, the recycled equivalent reduces life cycle emissions by 90% - saving 27 tonnes of carbon emissions for each tonne of material used.

Global demand for carbon fibre is ever-increasing, and it is forecasted that by 2025, it will reach 262,000 tonnes. If just 1% of that carbon fibre was recycled, it would save 70,848 tonnes of carbon emissions – equivalent to more than our total emissions in 2022 or a quarter of F1's 2019 carbon footprint. 

That such a small change can make such a big difference is precisely why our team’s work has been so effective. Our long-term targets are hugely ambitious and require significant progress both at McLaren and in the wider market, but in the short term, there are many incremental improvements and innovations available to us.

What starts with a trial can grow into something much more significant, but these smaller adjustments don’t only help us to unlock the potential for much greater change in the future, they make us more sustainable in the present.

Oscar agrees: “It’s incredible to think of the impact such a seemingly small change could make to the overall carbon emissions of the sport if it’s used more widely, and it's very exciting to be the team taking the step to try it.”

None of this would have been possible had the entire team not bought into it. Like all of our sustainability work to date, the rCF project has been a company-wide effort. Led by the Sustainability and Materials Engineering teams, they came together with Composites Manufacturing, Procurement, Brand and Commercial to make this a reality.

Lando is in his fifth season with the team, has been on this sustainability journey with us from the start and  says he’s excited by this next step: “I was the first driver to race in a seat made out of bio-based flax fibre in 2020, and now I get to be at the forefront of innovation again by trialling recycled carbon fibre on the car in Austin.”

Krzys expands: “The reason we're doing this trial and we're so excited about it is because it is about showing that this is possible. It is about exploring what can be done in the manufacturing of a Formula 1 car to make it more sustainable.  

“Everything has a carbon footprint. When you take a raw material and manufacture it, especially something very complex like carbon fibre which has a lot of different components, all of those raw materials have to be extracted, processed and transported, and there's energy and fuel that go into all of those things. We're also then using energy to dispose of it. If you recycle that piece of carbon fibre, then you’re skipping a lot of those steps.”

As a team, we’re determined to be at the heart of a sustainability sea-change across Formula 1. As part of our four-pillared sustainability strategy, we aim to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint by 50% by 2030, become net zero by 2040, accelerate the transition to a circular economy, and research & develop a fully circular F1 car.

This means keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible while minimising the resources we consume and the waste we produce. We’ve already made steps towards this – as Lando mentioned, we introduced bio-based flax fibre as a substitute for traditional carbon fibre in 2020, which has been successfully used in both drivers’ seats ever since.

“A more circular economy is essential to decarbonising not only us as McLaren Racing but also the sport and industry more widely,” says Krzys. “We really want to throw our weight behind these developing technologies so that they can scale and develop to the point where they can be used across the grid.”

And although we are proud to be the first team to achieve this, we believe in a future where teams across the grid can work together in sustainability for the greater good, as CEO Zak Brown has previously discussed: “To unlock this incredible potential, we need to find better ways to share expertise and insights across our industry.

“Only true collaboration will help us drive meaningful change. We rise and fall together. We each have to play our part, raise our standards, take accelerated action to reduce our negative impacts. And we need to support each other along the way."

COO Piers Thynne also emphasised the need to work with other organisations within the sport, when discussing our rCF project: “We will continue to work closely with the FIA, F1 and fellow teams to help accelerate change.”

If our rCF trial proves successful, it could play a defining role in creating a fully circular Formula 1 car, which would surely go down as one of motorsport’s greatest and most important innovations, just like carbon fibre did.

So even though NASA isn’t linked to our latest carbon fibre innovation, like they were in 1981, it still feels like its impact could be astronomical.