McLaren Applied Technologies chief Geoff McGrath

Amid the glittering corridors, shining glass and the dazzling array of vintage racing cars at McLaren’s Woking headquarters, there’s one division that has very little to do with cars. Charged with taking McLaren’s edge on the circuit (and, more recently, the road) and using it in other sectors, McLaren Applied Technologies (MAT) aims to make the best use of the philosophy so respected in the pit lane. ’I want to surprise people with where we pop up,’ said managing director Geoff McGrath. ’The specialities we have here have applications in all sorts of areas.’

McGrath has taken a roundabout route into McLaren; motorsport is one of the few areas in which he hasn’t worked, although in some ways he sees his career as coming full circle. ’My PhD was in fluid mechanics, applied to gas-cooled reactors, and in that I used laser-doppler anenometry, which was fascinating because it taught me to work in wind tunnels and use lasers,’ he said. ’And that’s exactly what we use here to develop our cars - but I was working on early prototypes of the same systems in the 1980s.’