by Henry Catchpole
The Honda forklift truck (complete with its own cheeky Type R sticker) eases its two long prongs oh-so-carefully under the middle of the huge box before, agonisingly slowly, it begins lifting the precious cargo out of the lorry. I can hardly look. It’s all being done extremely gently, as if there’s a hibernating creature inside the big wooden crate that nobody wants to wake. Everybody seems to be holding their breath, but eventually the crate is safely on the floor of the huge workshop. Three more to go – one big, two small.
The numbers and letters scrawled on the sides of the boxes could just be prosaic shipping information or delivery codes, but of course MP4/4, RA272, NSR500 and RC164 have far more meaning than that. The oversized metal staples come out of the first crate, then a section of the lid is lifted off and inside I catch my first glimpse of an iconic white and red livery, slightly opaque beneath the layers of plastic. If it was me doing the unwrapping there would be a huge temptation to just rip the plastic off like a toddler attacking its presents on Christmas morning, but it is all peeled away reverentially and rightly so.
As the morning passes, so various names are revealed: ‘Senna’ on the McLaren MP4/4 chassis number 5 that took him to victories in Britain, Germany, Belgium and Hungary in 1988. ‘Ginther’ is written in much larger letters on the side of the V12 powered RA272 – the first Japanese car to win a Formula One Grand Prix when it took the flag in Mexico in 1965. The NSR500, resplendent in its gorgeous Rothmans livery simply has Freddie Spencer’s first name in white letters on the clear screen.
The unwrapping continues even once the cars and bikes are out, as bodywork is stripped off to allow the engineers to check systems and feed in vital fluids. If it’s possible, the McLaren looks even more striking when it’s naked. The bare black carbon fibre somehow adds to the menace of that jutting nose, while you can’t help but marvel at the incredibly tight packaging of the 1.5-litre V6 engine and the size of the turbos. Pristine white overalls have been donned by most of the engineers, giving the whole operation something of the air of a hospital surgery. Then, one by one, the cars and bikes are wheeled back out into the sunshine and woken up. It’s been a long journey to Goodwood, but they’re ready for the weekend.
