Inside Arrow McLaren’s New $30M Racing Center: The Facts, Figures, and Philosophy

Dude, Where’s My Car?

At the heart of every race team are the cars, and there is no better place to start than the shop floor. Of the team's 120 employees, roughly half work directly on the floor as mechanics and production staff handling gearboxes and more. Beside them are scores of tools and machinery, painting, vinyl—the list goes on.

In the old facility, managing the shop traffic alone was a daily headache. Thimjon described the logistics as a constant game of "hauler Tetris," where massive transport trucks had to be shuffled about just to create enough floor space to work.

As fun as that concept is for a mobile game, it doesn’t work well for a race team. Thankfully, the renovation expanded McLaren’s footprint from 33,000 to 86,000 square feet, and the crew that works on the shop floor clearly came out winners. The new space is large enough to park all the team's haulers indoors, and with room to spare.

Then come the car bays: 12 dedicated spaces sit neatly at the center, enough for a speedway car, a road course car, and a backup for each of their three full-time drivers. The other three bays are used for historic cars and one-offs like Ryan Hunter-Reay’s Indy 500 entry. The car engineers’ workstations sit at the front of all this action, beneath a massive mural of the Indianapolis 500 pit lane. To its left hang three massive banners draped like those for hall of famers or retired jerseys at a Pacers game. The mural is a reminder of one piece of the Triple Crown the team is fighting for, and the banners track the team’s progress, counting total podiums, victories, and poles. They’re tallies Thimjon jokes he hopes to "change a lot this season."

Whatever the cars need, the team doesn’t have to travel far. In the past, specialized work like vinyl wrapping or painting meant running to separate buildings or vendors across town. Updating parts was just as troublesome, sometimes requiring two to three weeks.

“Now, the engineers make a decision. It goes to our designers, comes to production. It can be on the car in two to three days,” stressed Thimjon. With so much under the same roof, problems can be solved in days or even minutes rather than weeks or hours.

Efficiency extends to the pit crew, too. The floor features a dedicated pit stop practice area with ground-down floors to replicate the texture of a pit lane. Crucially, they can configure the area to practice on either side of the car—mimicking the different pit lane layouts they face throughout the season.

And there is room to grow: CEO Zak Brown acknowledged that the facility is robust enough to house future IMSA efforts if the team decides to expand its sports car racing footprint in North America.

Last but not least, tucked in the corner is also space for Bruce McLaren’s restored 1972 Ford Condor RV, complete with original shag carpet and 1970s smell. This relic serves as CEO Zak Brown’s forward operating base at North American races. It was nice seeing an investment in these historic flourishes alongside the relentless focus on race pace.

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The Room(s) Where It Happens

While the downstairs is home to half the team, the upstairs is home to the other half, including about 30 engineers and 30 corporate and commercial roles such as marketing, partnerships, and business development. The need for high-end tools and workspaces is just as important to them as it is for the mechanics.

In the old facility, everyone was stacked on top of each other. “There weren't a lot of offices,” Thimjon said, “so there wasn't a lot of privacy. Sometimes you need to have conversations where you want some walls. We didn't have a lot of conference rooms.”

Now, the team has room to breathe. The open floorplan features pods of desks and chairs furnished by their partner Secret Lab, complete with bright papaya embroidery. For those with private offices, the partially frosted glass keeps the space feeling bright and accessible. Even Zak Brown’s office has a huge glass wall exposed to the second floor landing. Beyond the offices, the walls throughout the floor are also lined with conference rooms named after IndyCar tracks, and there are focus rooms for sensitive calls or quiet work.

Even getting geared up for the track is an upgrade. In the past, the team kit (uniforms) was kept in a separate warehouse. Now, it’s housed in a custom storage closet that keeps the gear organized, accessible, and ready for race day.

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Better, Stronger, Faster

The upgrades we saw extended beyond the “professional” and into the “personal” as a means of delivering on Thimjon’s goal of creating an environment people want to work in.

At the top of the main staircase, adjacent to where marketing and communications teams sit, is a large multi-purpose team room overlooking the shop floor. Its main use is as a lunch room, complete with high-end coffee machine, flavored water station, and pantry full of snacks and drinks. It can also serve as a meeting room, which we saw firsthand with Zak Brown delivering a team-wide town hall.

Downstairs and through the shop, tucked away at the back of the floor are two unassuming doors marked “McLaren Performance Hub.” Walking through them leads to an open gym with high ceilings. Along the back wall are brand new weight racks, and opposite them are stationary bikes. The far wall is lined with massive windows, filling the room with sunlight when the Indianapolis weather cooperates.

“Our last facility was, as Tony [Kanaan] calls it, a storage unit,” said Head of Communications Will Erickson. “We would have to drive a few blocks away” to reach the team’s old gym, which lived in a cold warehouse adjacent to where car parts were being made. “There was no place to shower, no real place to change.”

Now, there are full locker rooms and showers, so anyone on the team can train without returning to their workstations sweaty. And the upgrades aren't finished yet: Space was blocked off for where a hot tub, cold tub, and sauna will be installed.

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If You Build It, They Will Come

Grounding all of these upgrades are the more public spaces and general details woven into the building’s DNA. Per Thimjon, “We wanted [the building] to scream McLaren. We wanted it to scream IndyCar. We wanted it to scream racing.”

That’s pretty easy when you walk into a lobby featuring a big McLaren logo and three showcars. The car rotation during our visit? Pato O’Ward’s current IndyCar, Oscar Piastri’s 2025 Constructors’ Championship-winning Formula 1 car, and a McLaren road car.

Next to the road car sits a mural featuring every driver to win with McLaren Racing: Pato O’Ward, Lando Norris, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton—the list goes on. Sitting kitty-corner are race suits and helmets of the three IndyCar drivers: Pato, Christian Lundgaard, and Nolan Siegel. 

Perhaps the most surprising—and funny—fixture of the lobby is a custom papaya toilet bestowed on the new shop by Kohler. This automatic, heated, over-the-top-in-every-way toilet was turning heads all night. We even saw local news set up their camera and tripod to capture the wonder.

As for the rest of the space, murals, race gear, trophies, and more all fill the walls, injecting McLaren personality and history into what could have been a basic warehouse. Even the carpet has papaya threads woven in.

It creates a magnetic pull that is already working. Thimjon noted that partners are starting to host meetings and offsites in the new space, while fans are constantly stopping by to peer through the front windows and take photos. It’s the definition of a destination.

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The Flywheel is Spinning

The excitement we felt over nearly 12 hours inside the McLaren Racing Center was palpable. Unlike my messy apartment, this was a space the team not only wanted to spend time in, they wanted to show it off. Most importantly, this wasn’t a facelift—it was a true upgrade across the board that was already setting the flywheel in motion as Christian Lundgaard made very clear during the team’s car reveal.

“This is just a statement to us as well that we don’t have an excuse now,” Lundgaard said. “We need to go out and perform and that’s what we want to do. Every tool is now presented to us.”

The only thing left to renovate is a special case for a ‘2026 champion’ trophy.