McLaren selling five historic F1 cars
Brad Pitt has driven a Grand Prix car, one of nearly half a dozen McLaren F1 cars that is now for sale. Not a replica built for his film, but the genuine, race-winning article: a 2023 McLaren MCL37A that scored back to back podiums in Singapore and Japan before McLaren handed it to Pitt for a private test at the Circuit of the Americas, in character as his F1 the Movie driver Sonny Hayes, where he reportedly reached 197mph.
That car is one of five McLaren F1 cars that McLaren Racing has decided to sell, through the British dealer Tom Hartley Jnr, in a sale announced this week that spans 32 years of the team’s history. Two 1991 McLaren MP4/6As, driven by Gerhard Berger and tested by Ayrton Senna during his third and final World Championship season, sit alongside a 2012 MP4/27A raced by Jenson Button and tested by Lewis Hamilton, and two cars campaigned exclusively by Lando Norris: the 2021 MCL35M and the 2023 MCL37A that Pitt later drove.
What makes the sale unusual is not the cars’ fame but their custody. All five have remained with McLaren since the end of their competitive careers, never passing through a third party, which means the team that designed, built and raced them is also the one now certifying their history before handover. Tom Hartley Jnr, the Derbyshire dealer handling the sale, has form in exactly this territory: his business previously sold the car collection of former F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone and the twenty road-going McLarens belonging to the late team co-owner Mansour Ojjeh. “It is incredibly rare for a collector to have the opportunity to acquire race-driven Grand Prix cars directly from the manufacturer and team that built and campaigned them,” Hartley said.
The two 1991 cars carry the most storied history. Chassis 04 finished second in a one-two McLaren result at the San Marino Grand Prix, with both cars lapping the entire field, while chassis 07 took Berger to second place at McLaren’s home race at Silverstone. Both are Honda V12-powered, built before turbo engines were banned from the sport and before McLaren’s naturally aspirated V8 era that followed with Button and Hamilton a decade later.
The 2023 MCL37A is the one McLaren itself is calling the most modern Formula 1 car ever offered for private ownership. Raced exclusively by Norris, chassis 03 finished second in consecutive races at Singapore and Suzuka during the second half of the 2023 season, when McLaren’s form turned around sharply. After its competitive career ended, the car became a fixture of McLaren’s testing programme, driven not only by Norris but by his current teammate Oscar Piastri, IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward, Mick Schumacher, Valtteri Bottas and former Grand Prix driver turned broadcaster Martin Brundle, before Pitt’s turn behind the wheel last year.
Reuters reported that no asking prices have been disclosed, though values are expected to range from roughly £5 million to £10 million depending on the car. For comparison, a McLaren MP4-25A that Hamilton raced to victory in Turkey in 2010 sold for £4.8 million in 2021, while a Ferrari Michael Schumacher drove to a race win in 2001 fetched $7.5 million at a New York sale in 2017. McLaren has said the older cars will undergo full restoration and that all five will be prepared for their new owners before delivery, rather than sold as static exhibits.
The sale closes a loop that began with Senna’s final title and runs through to Norris’s own championship-winning 2025 season, his first as McLaren’s world champion since Hamilton in 2008. For a team headquartered in Woking that has spent much of the past decade rebuilding its competitiveness under Brown, offering genuine race-winning machinery for private ownership, rather than keeping it locked away, reads as a statement about confidence as much as a straightforward sale.
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