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

Published by

Daniel Face

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.”

Daniel Face

Born and raised in Berkshire, Dan fell into journalism after completing his bachelor’s degree in English at UCL. Writing for The Business Magazine and local Biz News sites has given him the opportunity to chat with all manner of small business owners and share their success stories with a wider audience. Outside of work, Dan enjoys live music, board games and quiz shows, and is making a slow but persistent effort to learn Spanish.