Kim Wilson

If you ask some people, the only thing circular about F1 racing is the wheels.

Fast cars, huge crowds, a global race series… it does not shout “planet-friendly”.

It sounds counterintuitive, but there is a rich seam of sustainability running through the sport – powered by the extraordinary engineers who work for the teams.

At McLaren Racing, the home of the current F1 constructors’ champions, the work goes on at its space-age headquarters near Woking, designed by Sir Norman Foster.

It is also the base for McLaren Racing’s Director of Sustainability, Kim Wilson.

Circularity and track success together

With her infectious enthusiasm, Kim is an ideal advocate for circularity and sustainability in F1.

She navigated an early career as a chartered accountant before taking a right turn to sustainability, arriving at her current destination via EDF Energy and EDF (UK).

Kim has an unequivocal belief that F1 will speed towards net zero – and that it will not be at the expense of performance.

She says: “I think there's a lot of people who think that you have to choose between sustainability and on-track performance,” adding: “We can deliver circularity and on-track performance together.”

McLaren: ready for sustainability

While some businesses take a while to get out of the blocks in the race to become sustainable, Kim says McLaren’s ethos and environment are already ideal.

They include high performance, precision engineering, R&D, entertainment and sports and media – and the people.

Kim says: “It's McLaren, but also it's the people and it's our culture. I've learned so much working at McLaren from the way we approach racing and engineering: learning and iterating and experimenting and moving forward and being really focused.

“Everybody's got a very, very clear focus on what we're trying to achieve as an organisation and bringing sustainability into the mix has been such an opportunity because it's something that is not a very mature industry in this space.”

The sustainability message has been well received – as one might expect at a business that thrives on challenge.

Kim says: “I've had a fantastic opportunity to create my own strategy, build a team, but integrate into our organisation and our culture and really drive some positive change. It's very solutions oriented, and that's what I love about it.”

Circularity: the next frontier

Winning F1 titles is one thing, but helping to head off a global ecological disaster is quite another.

McLaren Racing is showing its intent by giving itself exacting targets, validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, of decarbonising its emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2040.

Kim explains how these targets are being approached, saying: “We've already done a lot of work within our industry on sustainable fuels. In 2026, we will have sustainable fuels coming into the Formula One car.

“Across the industry, not necessarily just McLaren, we have done a lot of work focusing on the fact that we have to travel around the world. It’s about sustainable fuels and sustainable travel.”

But circularity in F1 is “the next frontier”, Kim argues.

“We have a net zero commitment by 2040 and to decarb our emissions by 2030, but a really big part of that is our supply chain.

“It's the same as any other organisation and we need to be able to lean into the materials that we use and what we buy to be able to run our business and our team.”

Remarkably, McLaren is closing in on developing a fully circular F1 car, which Kim says is crucial in a “resource constrained world”, with businesses facing supply chain disruption.

Leading the F1 decarbonisation race

McLaren was the first team to use recycled carbon fibre on its car, in 2023 at the US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. It was trialled again at Silverstone on a different part of the car, Kim says.

“So we are experimenting with alternative materials and that's something that I think is really important as part of innovation. We've also been using flax fibre for a while in Lando Norris’s seat as an alternative. So we are doing stuff in that space already.”

However, the real accelerator project is McLaren and Deloitte’s partnership to measure circularity.

Kim says: “It's not something that anyone in our industry is doing and it's quite new in the space of sustainability.

“There's the global circularity protocol that's being developed at the moment, but we are taking the nuances of Formula One and applying it to how a Formula One team can measure that. So what gets measured gets managed.”

Kim adds: “We have now developed a metric and it's been commissioned by the FIA, our regulator. We are sharing that with the rest of the teams so that everyone can measure circularity and understand what is the impact and how circular the materials that we use to design and develop our car are across the season.”

None of the above can happen with collaboration, Kim argues.

“Despite the fact that I work in probably one of the most competitive industries in the world, collaboration is absolutely fundamental.

“And I think we absolutely have to do that by demonstrating that we are collaborating through our partnerships with our amazing commercial partners, but also our regulator and our other teams in a pre-competitive space.”

She adds: “At the end of the day, we want to raise the standard of what we're doing in sustainability, demonstrate, improve the art of the possible in a very solutions orientated way, and therefore we can continue to go and do what we love, but in a more respectful way for the planet.”

Circularity: a true measure of success

McLaren and Deloitte’s Formula One constructors’ circularity handbook measures the materials used to research and develop a Formula One car, explains Kim.

She says: “We take the input materials into our factory over a season and we look at the weight of them and how circular they are, and then we also look at what goes out the other end in terms of waste and look at how circular that is.

“That gives us a percentage of our total materials on how circular they are. Then we can use that as a way of asking what we can do to move the dial towards 100%.

“At the moment, we are feeling confident that quite a significant proportion of what goes out of our factory is being recycled.”

Accelerating circularity with Deloitte and Ecolab

When it comes to embedding and accelerating circularity, it is definitely a team game.

When McLaren Racing recognised the need for expert help, it turned to one of the globe’s largest consultancies, Deloitte.

The two businesses have been working together since 2020, as David Rakowski, partner and circularity lead, Deloitte UK, explains: “Currently Deloitte is helping McLaren to embed circularity, the concept of eliminating waste and maximising resources through reuse and recycling, into McLaren’s sustainability mission.

“We have drawn on our experience of helping clients around the world to model, pilot and scale the circular economy, including our work in developing the Global Circularity Protocol for Business, to create this first important step on the journey - the handbook.”

The circularity handbook has been put together for all F1 teams, guiding their journey to circularity and giving a common approach to its measurement.

David adds: “The challenge of implementing circularity can sometimes be daunting – you need to transform your product, supply chain, business model and digital ecosystem. But once you put the organisation infrastructure in place to do this, it is very feasible.

“I think bold organisations like McLaren, which are at the forefront of this journey, have a real opportunity to show that it is possible – and prove it is less complex if there's a genuine commitment to change.”

McLaren also works with Ecolab, to demonstrate how sustainability and performance do not have to conflict with each other and actually go hand in hand.

The pair are also collaborating to decarbonise McLaren’s business travel.

Sharing is caring – for the planet

While F1 teams are not short of money, they operate under a strict cost cap, administered by the sport’s governing body, the FIA.

The realities of a competitive environment means on-track performance will always be the last spend standing – some way ahead of sustainability.

The FIA has been “really supportive”, Kim explains.

“They've allowed us to do this circularity work outside of the cost cap, which is important because if we had to spend the money, then that would've been money we couldn't spend on track performance.

“We will be able to share the results and hopefully help shape the regulations so that in the future we create a level playing field for everybody where we are performing on track and being more sustainable as a sport.”

Sharing research and expertise goes beyond the industry. Kim believes McLaren’s innovative tech and design features will continue to be picked up by the automotive industry.

She says: “The fact that we've used recycled carbon fibre on our car and proved that you can use it in a high performance sport like Formula One, then it's a great opportunity to demonstrate the art of the possible and to take those learnings and those iterations and translate that into the wider industry and other industries.”

That’s entertainment and so much more

If you still think F1 is just about fast cars and high-octane entertainment, there is still time to think again. Kim knows that there is much more to it.

“The really exciting part of my role is to be able to give back and show that, yes, F1 is an R&D organisation and an entertainment industry.

“That's what everyone goes to and what they see on TV, but actually behind the scenes there is so much we can do.

“And I think, in the sustainability space, being able to be solutions driven and to be able to prove that there are things out there that we can do at a time when people may be losing a little bit of hope, is a really important message that we can share.”

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.

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