Racing
© Jonathan Borba
McLaren says it has created a “Circular Car Roadmap” with Google and Deloitte as it pushes toward building a fully circular Formula 1 car, putting a specific development plan behind its effort to cut waste and environmental impact across design, manufacturing and reuse.
The roadmap sits at the center of McLaren Racing’s 2025 sustainability report and is framed as a long-term rethink of how an F1 car is built. McLaren said it “sets out a pathway to rethink how race cars are designed, manufactured, and reused, with the ambition of reducing environmental impact and waste at every stage,” while balancing existing technology with a forward-looking view of future regulatory shifts.
In McLaren’s definition, the circular concept is about reusing materials and eliminating excess in manufacturing from development through to component reuse. The team said it has also started addressing the volume and types of materials traditionally used in F1 car design and production, shifting the focus from broad environmental targets to the car itself and the processes behind it.
McLaren backed that plan with current manufacturing data from 2025. It reported a 14% reduction in total waste generation compared with 2024, a 40% drop in hazardous waste disposal linked to composite-component manufacturing, and 22% circularity in production of its F1 chassis. That figure included the use of recycled metals, bio-based materials, general waste recycling and the reuse of hazardous liquids.
Zak Brown, McLaren Racing CEO, said the project has become more important as the championship expands. “As our sport continues to see incredible growth around the world, it is all the more important that we work hard to reduce our overall impact on the planet and the pressures on global resources,” Brown said in remarks published with the team’s 2025 sustainability report.
He said partnerships are central to that work and added that he was “excited by the work we’re doing with Deloitte and Google to continue our mission to build a fully circular F1 car.”
For McLaren, that gives its sustainability push a more direct racing application than a standard corporate target. By tying measurable waste reductions to a Google- and Deloitte-backed roadmap for redesigning how race-car materials are sourced, manufactured and reused, the team is presenting the circular car as a practical future model for F1 development rather than a distant ambition.