“He told me to go and find three other customers who wanted a racing car, and he’d charge us £650,000 plus VAT. I found two other buyers and took delivery of the car at the same time as my road car, so I had two McLaren F1s.
“I’ve owned five F1s – they were all very well built, and getting them serviced was never a problem.
“My racing car only had one engine problem. The replacement was £80,000, which was a lot of money back then. It would cost you a million quid today.”
Servicing and repair costs aren’t for the faint of heart. A replacement clutch costs a five-figure sum, and the Kevlar fuel cell needs changing every five years. It’s an engine-out job.
Finding an F1 for sale is another challenge: they never end up in the classifieds, and while Bellm noted that they do come up for auction every so often, most are sold in secret.
“Last year, several cars changed hands,” reveals Bellm, who also founded the McLaren F1 Owners Club. “Most of the original owners are into their seventies now so quite a few are selling. I bought chassis 16R for £350,000 in 2004, so they were cheap at one point, but only when I started the owners club [in 2011] did they start to climb in value.”
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