Minichamps 1:43 McLaren MCL36 – Lando Norris, Abu Dhabi GP 2022 Art. 537226504

A 1:43 model of the McLaren MCL36 as raced by Lando Norris at the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix — the final race of the season and the last outing for this car. Resin, papaya orange with VUSE branding, on a display base with a clear case and official McLaren packaging.

The end of a season the team wanted to forget

Abu Dhabi 2022 closed a year McLaren had begun in a genuine crisis. Pre-season testing in Bahrain had gone so badly — a brake package that overheated within a few laps — that neither driver completed a proper long run, and the team arrived at the opening race without knowing what it had built.

It finished the season fifth, behind an Alpine team it had comfortably beaten the year before, with no podiums and 159 points. Lando Norris scored 122 of them.

By the time this race was run, Daniel Ricciardo's contract had already been terminated, Oscar Piastri had been signed, and Andreas Seidl was on his way out as team principal. The team that emerged eighteen months later, winning races with a transformed MCL60, is a different organisation.

The last of the line

A final-race model has a specific appeal: it is the last time a given car ever turned a wheel in anger. Every subsequent model is of something else.

This weekend is also Ricciardo's last for McLaren, and Piastri drove the same chassis at the post-season test days later — three models from one circuit in one week, marking a changeover.

In the range

Set 537226503 is Ricciardo's car from this race, 537224328 Piastri's from the test that followed, and 537226004 Norris's from Singapore.

Specifications

Scale: 1:43 · Resin · Limited edition · Display base, clear case, official McLaren packaging
Model length: approx. 10 cm