McLaren wins approval for new Woking F1 test rig

McLaren has received planning approval from Woking Borough Council for a factory extension at its Woking headquarters that will house a new Formula 1 test rig and an associated external condenser.

The project is aimed at strengthening McLaren’s in-house development capability at a time when track running is tightly limited. Planning documents said the new rig is needed to “continue to support the F1 team's operations,” with the team also stating that expansion is required because the existing McLaren Technology Centre is full.

The approved scheme revises plans first signed off in 2025. It includes what the documents describe as a modest increase in the depth of the extension beneath the existing south-east roof canopy, while the condenser plant will be moved to a discrete compound adjacent to, but physically separate from, the new rig area.

McLaren’s new test rig space will cover 143 square metres beneath the existing south-east roof canopy at the Technology Centre. Woking Borough Council has required work to begin within three years.

The need for that kind of facility has grown as Formula 1 teams lean more heavily on simulator and bench testing. Earlier this year McLaren sent its new MCL40 to specialist AVL’s test rig facilities in Austria for running before the car’s debut at the first pre-season test in Barcelona, underlining how important external infrastructure has become when full on-track testing is restricted.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained that shift earlier this year, saying full-vehicle rig work now allows teams to validate key systems more thoroughly than they can with subsystem-only tools. “This is common practice now in F1, such that you can sign off some fundamental systems of the car much more than what you can do when you run some of these subsystems like the gearbox in the gearbox rig and dyno that we may have here at MTC,” Stella said.

For McLaren, the significance of the approval is that more of that work can now move onto its own Woking campus, giving the team direct access to a tool that has become increasingly important to modern F1 car development.