McLaren has secured planning permission for a factory extension at its Woking headquarters that will house a new test rig for its Formula 1 team.
Planning officers have approved updated work on the new building, with an application having been submitted for the test rig and the provision of an external condenser.
In documents that McLaren submitted to Woking Borough Council as part of the process, architects tor&co stated that the aim of the test rig was to continue to support the F1 team's operations - with expansion needed because the current McLaren Technology Centre factory was full.
It stated: "To ensure the continued success and diversification of the McLaren Group into new markets, new facilities and testing equipment like this test rig need to be accommodated on campus to help facilitate continued growth and to deliver the technical and operational requirements of the group."
The plans are tweaked from ones that had been approved in 2025 as they include a "modest increase in the depth of the test rig extension beneath the existing roof canopy and the relocation of associated condenser plant to a discrete compound adjacent to but physically separate from the extension".
The new test rig area, which measures 143 square metres, will be built beneath the existing south-east roof canopy. The condenser element is required to serve the test rig operations.
Woking Borough Council says work on the new test rig facility must begin within three years.
Test rig value
With on-track running heavily restricted, the use of test rigs has become increasingly important in F1.
Earlier this year, McLaren shipped its new MCL40 to specialist AVL's test rig facilities in Austria for running prior to its debut at the first pre-season test at Barcelona.
Speaking at the time about that decision, team principal Andrea Stella said: "This is common practice now in F1, such that you can sign off some fundamental systems of the car much more than what you can do when you run some of these subsystems like the gearbox in the gearbox rig and dyno that we may have here at MTC [McLaren Technology Centre].
"It's a facility, AVL, that we have been using for some time."
Having more test rig facilities will mean that McLaren has much easier access to tools that can help it improve its car on-site rather than needing to transport things to external partners.
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