One of the most recognizable McLaren F1s ever built is being offered for sale with a value said to exceed $35 million.
The car is chassis 10R, a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR known to enthusiasts as “The Pop Art F1” for the scarlet and yellow factory livery it wears — a graphic treatment drawn from 1990s British pop art sensibilities and the only such scheme applied to any F1 GTR. That distinction alone makes it the most instantly identifiable example of the model.
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Its provenance runs deeper than the paint. Chassis 10R was the first of just nine cars built to 1996 specification, the quickest and most sought-after version of the racer. It is also one of only two short-tail GTR prototypes in existence, the other being chassis 01R, the car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 1995.
Rather than sell it to a privateer team, McLaren initially kept 10R in-house. The car was driven at the 1996 24 Hours of Le Mans during testing before the factory converted it for road use — a transformation that returned a purpose-built racer to public roads.
In 1999 the McLaren was acquired by Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer and longtime collector of significant automobiles. Mason kept the car for 25 years, an unusually long tenure for a machine of this caliber, and the pairing of Britain’s most graphically striking F1 GTR with a founding member of one of Britain’s most visually iconic bands has become part of the car’s story.
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The F1 GTR also occupies a particular place in motorsport history. It stands as the last Le Mans-winning racecar developed directly from a road-going GT hypercar, marking the close of an era in which competition cars and street cars still shared the same fundamental engineering.
Between its prototype status, its factory livery, its testing appearance at Le Mans, its factory road conversion and a quarter-century in the hands of a rock and roll legend, chassis 10R combines a set of circumstances that no future car can replicate — an artifact of 1990s British pop culture as much as automotive engineering.
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Images Via: RM Sothebys
