Surrey’s McLaren joins forces with MOD to drive defence projects

Woking-based McLaren Racing is set to collaborate with the Ministry of Defence on a variety of innovative defence projects.

The MOD will learn from McLaren Racing’s accelerator team as they work together on initiatives like Project LURCHER – a push to electrify the Army’s armoured vehicle fleet.

To mark the start of the partnership, the NEOM McLaren Extreme E race car was shown alongside a Project LURCHER vehicle at the BattleLab, a co-creation space in Dorset.

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Electrification could make military vehicles more operationally effective, cutting down the need to resupply and thus reducing the vulnerability of forces in the field.

Matt Dennington, co-chief commercial officer at McLaren Racing, said: “This new partnership with the MOD provides a great opportunity to stretch and apply our innovation and technological know-how and a high-performance culture with a view to improving operational efficiencies across a wide range of exciting projects.

“Under the multi-year partnership, the MOD will collaborate through McLaren Accelerator to apply motorsport innovation and insights to projects that are jointly selected by Defence and McLaren teams.”

Defence secretary Grant Shapps added: “This exciting partnership will see McLaren Racing bring their world-class expertise from the racetrack into a number of defence projects.

“By collaborating with industry, we’ll continue to drive innovation through knowledge sharing, which will benefit defence’s engineering and operations across the course of the partnership and beyond.”

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