The blue F1 is chassis #011 and is owned by John McCaw from Seattle. He purchased it exactly as you see it at the Christie's Auction in June 2003 for $1.075M USD including buyer's premium - quite a bargain compared to today's prices. The car was originally Carbon (almost black) with a red stripe on the ventline of the door. It's second owner was one of two brothers from Venezuela who both owned F1s which they kept in the UK. He was the one who had the Downforce Kit fitted and then later had the car resprayed in that vibrant blue paint, reportedly to match the face of a watch he owned.

The silver F1 is chassis #068 and when you saw it in Monterey in 2009 it belonged to Dan Watkins of Massachusetts. He and three friends had driven some of the cars from his collection across the US the week prior to Monterey in a trip they dubbed "Supercars Across America". Automobile Magazine printed an article about their journey here. Dan was a great owner, but unfortunately chose to sell the car earlier this year and right now it's in the UK. Previously it spent about 4 years with an owner in Costa Rica, and prior to that it was here in the USA with a different owner who also had another road car and an F1 LM. I rode in that F1 back in 2005 - definitely a great day for me!

I love all your F1 pics Gideon - thanks for sharing them at Flickr.

>8^)
ER

 

Those are really excellent shots of that pair. If there are more from those sets I'd love to see them.

>8^)
ER

 

Cool shots of 16R in the spray booth at Mototechnique in the UK. Props to Greg for finding them.

















>8^)
ER

 

Did they just repaint it in the same papaya orange color? Maybe it's just imaginary but somehow it looks a bit darker before the repaint.

 

Why's it getting sprayed?

 

The pics are kind of out of order, but if you study them a bit closer you'll see they just repainted the nose of the car and then some of the other areas that get road rash while driving. This was done while the car was for sale through DK Engineering sometime in 2008/2009. I can assure you that Mototechnique would have matched the paint exactly so any variation on colour (spelled the Brit's way) is a result of the camera/lighting variance.

>8^)
ER

 

The Papaya orange is a beautiful colour, I really like it.

 

It's my favorite on all Mclaren cars.

 

ah... can't stop drooling...

 

I am very suprised to see the front fascia and splitter were not disassembled before the respray.