A rock drummer’s one-off McLaren F1 GTR is about to become the most expensive McLaren ever sold, and the story behind it is wilder than the price tag.
Every August, Monterey, California turns into the world’s biggest garage sale for people with more money than sense. It’s called Monterey Car Week, and this year the headline act isn’t even at the famous Pebble Beach lawn. It’s going under the hammer at RM Sotheby’s flagship auction on August 15, and it belongs to Nick Mason, the drummer of Pink Floyd.
The car is chassis 10R, a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR. If you know your McLarens, that name alone should get your pulse up. The F1 GTR is the race-bred version of the McLaren F1, the car that held the title of world’s fastest production car for over a decade and remains one of the most obsessed-over machines in automotive history. This particular one is estimated to sell for more than $35 million, which works out to roughly ₹300 crore at current exchange rates. That would make it the priciest McLaren to ever change hands at auction.
Why this one is different from every other F1 GTR
Chassis 10R isn’t just any GTR. It’s one of only two factory-built “Short-Tail” prototypes built to the quicker 1996 specification, and it’s the only F1 GTR that McLaren’s own factory painted in a special livery rather than a customer team’s racing colours. That scheme, blood red with bold yellow graphics, has earned it the nickname “The Pop Art F1.” McLaren used the car for development and pre-qualifying running at the 1996 24 Hours of Le Mans before converting it for road use, which is a fancy way of saying this hardcore race car was later made legal to drive on public roads.
Under that pop-art skin sits a 6.1-litre V12 built by BMW’s motorsport division, the same engineering group that built engines for BMW’s own race cars. In race trim it made close to 600 horsepower, sent through a 6-speed manual gearbox with a magnesium casing to save weight. For context, that’s supercar-humbling power from an engine that’s nearly 30 years old, built at a time when most manufacturers hadn’t figured out how to make a V12 both light and reliable.
Nick Mason bought the car in 1999 and drove it for 25 years, funding two separate restorations and taking it on tours through Tuscany and demo runs at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. He sold it privately in 2024, and it’s now heading to public auction for the first time.
Why Indian enthusiasts should care about a car that’ll never officially reach here
No, you’re not going to see a McLaren F1 GTR at a Mumbai traffic signal anytime soon. But this sale matters for a simple reason: it’s a reminder of why the F1 name still carries so much weight, decades after the original went out of production. Every hypercar you see teased today, from the McLaren W1 to Bugatti’s latest, is chasing the legend this car helped build. Auction results like this one also set the benchmark for the entire collector car market, and when a McLaren breaks its own record, prices for everything below it in the pecking order tend to shift too.
The result of the Nick Mason sale should be out by the weekend of August 15 to 16. If it clears $35 million, it’ll be the most anyone has ever paid for a McLaren at auction, and one more sign that the F1 GTR’s legend hasn’t faded one bit in nearly 30 years.
| Chassis | 10R (1996-spec Short-Tail prototype) |
| Engine | 6.1-litre BMW V12 |
| Power | Approx. 600 hp (race-restricted) |
| Gearbox | 6-speed manual, magnesium casing |
| Auction | RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, August 15, 2026 |
| Estimate | In excess of $35 million (approx. ₹300 crore) |
