The McLaren Technology Centre: in pictures

The McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, exemplifies the quieter fortune being made by the UK motorsport industry, with the Norman Foster-designed building the centrepiece of a motorsport sector worth around £6bn to the UK economy. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

Long white corridors and glass lifts take visitors to an indoor boulevard, lined with historic McLaren vehicles on one side and a view of an artificial lake, glimpsed through an undulating glass wall, on the other. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

Eight of the dozen F1 teams who competed in last year’s championship are based in the UK and McLaren, which came third in the constructor’s league, is one of its most successful participants. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

The roughly semi-circular building with its sweeping roof line sits beside a formal lake which is an integral part of the cooling system. The lakeside facade is a unbroken curved glass wall, shaded by a cantilevered roof, that looks out across the landscape. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

The wall of glass on the outer skin of the building maximises natural light to provide a comfortable working environment and minimizes reliance on traditional energy consumption. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

McLaren’s ambitions have now moved beyond motorsport. Last year it opened a production centre next to the MTC, where it builds the 12c and 12c Spider sports cars, offshoots of decades of competing in the upper echelons of F1. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

In contrast with mass-market manufacturers, the paint finish is applied manually by specialist staff rather than robots. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

Ron Dennis, executive chairman of the McLaren group, which is majority owned by Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, describes the atmosphere as a “reassuring hush”. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

The cars are assembled in a white-tiled hall where the only sound is the squeak of new car tyres as the completed models are driven into testing booths. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

There is no conveyor belt or the usual industrial white noise of stamping machines and welding robots that greets visitors at mass-production sites. The McLaren centre allows the whole team - design, development, engineering, purchasing, testing, production, marketing, sales and aftersales - to be fully integrated. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer

Production of the £200,000 12c sports cars is overseen by Mike Flewitt, who helped churn out 8,500 vehicles a day when he was vice-president of manufacturing at Ford’s European operations. Last year, McLaren produced 1,552 cars in total. “We are a road car company that has developed from a race car company. This is McLaren standards applied to state-of-the-art vehicle manufacturing,” he says. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Observer