SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAINS
Leading the F1 decarbonisation race McLaren was the first team to use recycled carbon fibre on its car, in 2023 at the US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. It was trialled again at Silverstone on a different part of the car, Kim says.
“ So we are experimenting with alternative materials and that’ s something that I think is really important as part of innovation. We’ ve also been using flax fibre for a while in Lando Norris’ s seat as an alternative. So we are doing stuff in that space already.”
However, the real accelerator project is McLaren and Deloitte’ s partnership to measure circularity.
Kim says:“ It’ s not something that anyone in our industry is doing and it’ s quite new in the space of sustainability.
“ There’ s the global circularity protocol that’ s being developed at the moment, but we are taking the nuances of Formula One and applying it to how a Formula One team can measure that. So what gets measured gets managed.”
Kim adds:“ We have now developed a metric and it’ s been commissioned by the FIA, our regulator. We are sharing that with the rest of the teams so that everyone can measure circularity and understand what is the impact and how circular the materials that we use to design and develop our car are across the season.”
None of the above can happen with collaboration, Kim argues.
50 June 2025