McLaren plans more tech investment to boost operations, finance chief says

F1 team has spent 'huge amount' on finance unit to help navigate costs amid spending cap, Laura Bowden says

Laura Bowden, chief financial officer of McLaren Racing, says investing in technology has been vital for the team. Photo: McLaren

British Formula One team McLaren Racing is open to investing in more technology platforms and teaming up with financial service providers to streamline its business operations, its chief financial officer has said, as innovations continue to transform efficiency in sport.

The reigning Formula One constructors' champion has focused specifically on its finance unit, in which, it has invested "a huge amount" over the past couple of years, Laura Bowden said, without providing a specific figure.

"Technologies right now, practically anyone can tap into, to [help] streamline operations and maybe affecting the bottom line of companies," she told The National from the UK.

McLaren, based in Surrey, southern England, is also looking out for more partnerships in this regard. Last year, it signed a long-running deal with Singapore-based finance platform Airwallex to modernise its global payment operations and support its racing team.

The partnership aims to optimise McLaren's supply chain payments for all Grand Prix events. Before they teamed up, McLaren’s existing infrastructure featured only limited payment to suppliers, such as hotel and event space providers, to a singular currency account based in the UK, resulting in high foreign exchange charges, slow transfer time and additional Swift fees.

Now, with Airwallex, one of the latest platforms McLaren has got on board, the team is able to process payments, especially cross-border, more quickly, saving costs and time, in addition to benefiting from lower forex rates, Ms Bowden said. Processing payments that used to take two to five days is now "fairly instantaneous", she added.

"We used to set up every payment individually, having a couple of people in the finance team who literally, at points in a month, would only do that," she said, noting that the team had to deal with several suppliers across Europe and the Americas.

"Now everything goes on that one platform and all of the templates are saved. So there are some good savings in terms of man hours every month in doing so," she added.

McLaren's investments have also helped it to operate within the sport's salary cap, introduced in 2021 and which limits how much a team can spend in a calendar year to promote competitive parity and help financial sustainability.

The 2021 cap was set at $145 million, reduced to $140 million in 2022 and brought down to $135 million for 2023 through to 2025. It is set to increase to $215 million next year.

"We're limited as to how much we can spend to go racing," Ms Bowden said. "Our focus now is how we can deliver as much performance for every pound we spend, so we just can't waste anything. The result of that is that we have to track all areas of our spend really closely – from the nuts and bolts to the manpower, and specifically in terms of some of our finance spend."

McLaren, which has won 12 drivers' and nine constructors' championships, has long kept pace with an evolving technology landscape, particularly leveraging artificial intelligence and data.

The team had been collecting data since the 1980s and '90s, during the time of drivers Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, both of whom advocated information gathering "because they could see the results translate on track", McLaren said.

"But at the time, there was very little we could track and it was all done physically with a stopwatch, a pen and a pad of paper. We were mostly limited to how quickly a car was going around each section of the circuit," its website says.

Today, with advancements in technology, McLaren has more options, especially as technology sponsorships in Formula One continue to rise.

In 2024, technology surpassed financial services to become the single-biggest source of revenue for Formula One teams, comprising 18 per cent, up from 13 per cent in 2022, latest data from London-based research firm Ampere Analysis shows.

"This is all about investing in technology to take away some of those more laborious tasks that really aren't adding value on a daily basis," Ms Bowden said.

The Formula One calendar makes several stops in the Middle East, including in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in April, Qatar in November and culminating in Abu Dhabi in December.

Ms Bowden said McLaren does not have expansion or partnership plans for the UAE and Middle East at the moment. Dubai ports operator DP World is one of McLaren's major partners.

"We're always looking at our partner base ... we have a great suite of partners at the moment," she said.

The team's other notable drivers are Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, who is tied with Ferrari and Mercedes legend Michael Schumacher for the most drivers' championships won, with seven.