You Can Thank Sergio Pérez For These Special Edition McLarens

Sergio Pérez’s fairly unfortunate 2024 Formula 1 season may have lost him his seat at Red Bull, but it has at least led to some McLaren road cars with fancy new paint jobs. To mark the F1 team’s first constructors’ championship since 1998 – a feat that was possible thanks to only a single Red Bull driver doing the heavy lifting for points – McLaren Automotive has unveiled this duo of limited-run cars it’s calling the MCL38 Celebration Editions.

They’re based on the coupe versions of the 750S and Artura, and both get a colour scheme developed by McLaren’s Special Operations personalisation division, reflecting the livery of the championship-winning MCL38.

It features the same chevron-shaped colour split as the racing machines, with the back half of the cars finished in the team’s signature Papaya Orange and the front in Anthracite black. A Papaya racing stripe extends down the cars’ bonnets, and the brake callipers are finished in that vivid hue too.

Other exterior details include a champions’ laurel wreath and a ‘nine-star’ logo, referencing the nine constructors’ championships the team now has to its name.

We don’t have pictures of the interiors yet, but it apparently includes some bits that make these cars a bit more special than the new paint job does. A plaque displays a small piece of carbon fibre taken from an MCL38, while the driver’s side sill kickplate has been signed by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri on each example.

Neither car gets any mechanical upgrades, meaning the hybrid Artura gets a combined 691bhp from its combination of 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 and axial flux electric motor; while the 750S makes 740bhp from its sole power source, a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8.

Just nine of each MCL38 Celebration Editions will be built, and we don’t know how much they’ll go for. Whatever you think of McLaren’s F1 team and the arguably cynical cash-in opportunity of a motorsport special edition, though, we can surely all agree on one thing: these are better than the limited-edition cans of fizzy caffeinated heart palpitations we’d have got if Red Bull had won the championship again.