Green Grids: McLaren's F1 blueprint for eco-friendly cars

McLaren has collaborated with Deloitte and the FIA to produce a handbook aimed at improving sustainability practices in the design and build of Formula 1 cars.

The F1 Constructors’ Circularity Handbook will initially provide all teams with a way to measure the environmental impact of the parts they produce and the processes involved, with a view to encouraging more sustainable choices and minimising overall waste.

Although the first iteration of the handbook, which will be circulated to all teams, only currently affects the overall chassis design of the car, this may be expanded further in future to include all other components outside of the teams' design remits - ie. power units and tyres.

The handbook contains a guide for how teams can measure 'circularity', in other words, the impact of a product on the current global ecosystem and its potential to be recycled or reused in another capacity rather than simply consigned to waste. Teams will then be able to collect that data for their internal processes and manufacturing, and feed their numbers back to the FIA.

"It's a really important milestone from our perspective at McLaren. We've had an ambition to research and develop a 'circular' Formula 1 car now since 2022, when I first started at McLaren and set up our sustainability team," said McLaren's head of sustainability Kim Wilson in a call with selected media including Motorsport.com.

"The idea is that we all individually measure our circularity for our own activities as a team, and then we can use that to drive internal improvements within the boundaries of the regulations, within the boundaries of what's available in the market.

"We can also then collectively look at what's common across the teams and work with the FIA to look at how we enable a level playing field so that we can all have common practices where it's more sustainable, where it benefits everybody without disadvantaging anyone else, whilst also enabling those who can and want to innovate, because we are still a championship and a competitive sport."

Nikolas Tombazis, FIA Single Seater Director

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

FIA head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis explained how this could affect teams in the future, stating that the governing body could - depending on the findings encouraged by the handbook - change the regulations to 'direct' teams towards using certain materials. 

This would not only include those that have a reduced environmental impact, but encourage recycling and reusing those materials within the design.

"We want to work with all the teams for these matters; we want all the teams to adopt certain practices where necessary," said Tombazis.

"[F1 may introduce] regulations in the future pushing the use of certain materials or pushing certain responsible practices. That [would be] in order to not give a disadvantage to somebody performance-wise or cost-cap-wise who engages in these practices, but ultimately to make sure that all the teams follow suit and do similar things. 

"We are particularly excited about this handbook because it's a very good story - track to society, let's say. We have a very important responsibility towards our sport and towards society: we need to do our part for the environment and for the carbon footprint. Circularity is a key element of this puzzle."

One example of a 'circularity' practice is the escalating use of recycled carbon fibre, which ensures that the energy used to produce the fibres from scratch is significantly reduced. The fibres can be separated from the matrix through multiple different processes; pyrolysis (ie. the thermal separation of fibres and matrix) has been the most popular in the industry thus far.

There is a small reduction in the tensile strength of the carbon fibres following the recycling process, but companies are expending great resources to mitigate this loss.

McLaren first trialled recycled carbon fibre at the 2023 United States Grand Prix with its partner V-Carbon, and again at last year's British Grand Prix. Recycled carbon fibre is also currently used in the build of the Gen3 Formula E cars.