The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America
In a secret location in a windowless warehouse, Kevin Hines of McLaren Philadelphia is the only person in the US certified to work on your F1.
Kevin Hines pulls a weighty three-ring binder from the shelf underneath his workbench. "This was a hand-me-down," he tells me.
He flips through the pages. Text, illustrations, graphs and tables splash by, each holding one tiny piece of the puzzle that, when it was first put together in the early 1990s, became one of the greatest and most renowned cars ever made: The McLaren F1.
Hines stops, points out a hand-drawn schematic in a corner of a page. "Sometimes you see notes," he says. The manual once belonged to the team at BMW responsible for the 6.1-liter V12 at the heart of the F1. Each engine—each cylinder of each engine—was individually tuned, fuel and spark profiles tweaked to compensate for minuscule variances. The experts added notes as they learned how to finesse this motor.
"I have a vacation coming up," Hines says. "I’m gonna take this and sit down and read through the whole thing. I’m excited to see what I find."
