What happens to the Formula 1 cars at the end of each year?

Each team has a different way of managing the cars that are shelved each December, such as this year, which covered the 22 races on the schedule. Most have their own museum, such as McLaren at the Technology Center in Woking, which houses 50 to 75 cars from legends such as Alain Prost, Niki Lauda, ​​Ayrton Senna, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

Other cars are in private collections, such as that of Prince Albert of Monaco, and others are at new car exhibitions either by the factories participating in the sport or their sponsors.

Former Formula 1 champions Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are among the collectors who will often enjoy multiples of the retail price of legendary cars in the future. Vettel’s collection includes, for example, the legendary Williams FW14B-Renault, with which Nigel Mansell destroyed the competition in the F1 championship in 1992.

However, less well-heeled collectors can occasionally purchase individual car parts, even from the e-store of the official Formula 1 website. Additionally, each car is made up of more than 80,000 parts, many of which are not even used during the race of the year – travel from game to game as replacements and are never needed. So they are new and perfect.

Some of the cars from the past are also still kept in working condition by the teams, for the infamous demo runs – various demonstrations around the world for the needs of sponsors – or for testing new drivers when and where they are allowed the use of modern cars is prohibited.

Others also remain functional, even among their collectors, who primarily participate in classic racing cars in Europe. Such races include, for example, the British Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​​​and the Monaco Historic Grand Prix.

The rest ends up either in the warehouses or, at best, in the team museums. Mercedes is also showing either complete cars or individual components from the past in its factories in Brackley (chassis) and Brixworth (engines). The team claims that these inspire workers to build their next car.

In addition, Mercedes has a proper museum, opened in 2016, of all its historic vehicles, from the W01 of 2010 to the W14 of 2023, which is even put into operation every year to ensure that they can be used in a demo or race history at any time .

There are more than a million older car parts in its warehouses. This includes all engines that the company has made available to its customer groups over the years – e.g. Aston Martin, McLaren, Williams – part of the agreement is the return of the engines to Brixworth after the end of the season. As a result, the customer groups’ historic cars are rarely functional.