PHOTOGRAPHY:
JONATHAN BUSHELL
Two McLaren Formula 1 chassis sit silently side-by-side in a workshop dazzlingly clean, orderly and unremittingly white in decor. Nothing unusual about such a scene at the McLaren Technology Centre, of course: it is the modern face of McLaren Racing; unwavering in its uniformity and regimentation, and this season, blazingly successful, too. While something improbably complicated is being worked on over the corridor in an identical-looking engineering bay, this particular sanctum is McLaren Heritage, and in it, among other racing crown jewels, are two M23s.
Firstly, the M23 needs no introduction whatsoever. For McLaren it was a car that really shot it to the F1 stratosphere, in 1974 helping the team to its first F1 World Drivers' Championship with recent Team Lotus defector Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel, the Brazilian claiming his second title. Or you might be a Peter Revson fan and associate the earlier M23 with the American’s win at the 1973 British Grand Prix in glamorous Yardley livery, rather than Emmo hauling those industrial sideburns to 1974 championship glory in Texaco war paint. Then again, how could we not mention Marlboro and the swashbuckling Hunt, 1976 champions, or Gilles Villeneuve bursting into F1 at the 1977 British Grand Prix? Denny Hulme, Mike Hailwood, Jochen Mass… you get the idea… It’s arguably as much a grand prix classic as anything else that has ever turned a wheel on the grid.