McLaren’s unique "Triple Crown" auction to sell future Formula 1, IndyCar and WEC Hypercar machinery went under the hammer in Abu Dhabi with RM Sotheby’s and generated a combined $19,927,500 for the racing team.

McLaren Racing is preparing to do something no major team has tried before. Three race cars from future seasons will be offered to the public in December, giving bidders a shot at machinery that hasn’t even been fully revealed yet.

Vettel was always the outside bet. He’d become F1’s youngest race winner in 2008, aged 21, but the pressure of his first championship fight through 2010 had tolled at points with some on-track errors. At no point had he led the standings, and it was only thanks to a late-season surge with wins in Japan and Brazil that he’d stayed in the hunt.

McLaren have handed an F1 lifeline to Italian racing star Leonardo Fornaroli off the back of his 2025 F2 championship victory. At last weekend's Qatar Grand Prix, F1 and its competitive feeder series F2 took to the track in Lusail with both championships still up for grabs.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is confident Sunday's title decider in Abu Dhabi will play out "within the boundaries of sportsmanship and fairness" as his two drivers go up against Red Bull's Max Verstappen for the sport's biggest prize.

"We will race accordingly to do whatever we can to get whatever that driver is in front to try and win the race,” Brown explained Friday.