Woah, ex-Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemelo is now working for McLaren

Well, this is interesting. Luca di Montezemelo, former Ferrari chairman and proper Scuderia hero, is now working for… McLaren. The same McLaren Ferrari has spent decades fighting on – and now off – the track. To misquote Bad Boys, things just got real.

The news surfaced after some enterprising digging via Reddit, and the UK’s Companies House – which lists, erm, all the companies in the UK – does indeed have Signore Montezemelo’s name listed as a ‘director’.

It’s important to note the 77-year old – appointed on 27 June 2025, which was last Friday – is listed under McLaren Group Holdings Limited. And here’s where it gets a little bit complicated. An Abu Dhabi-based “investment vehicle” called CVYN Holdings LLC bought McLaren Automotive and a “non-controlling stake in McLaren Racing” earlier this year in April.

It then formed ‘McLaren Group Holdings Limited’ which would “oversee the combined business of McLaren Automotive and CVYN’s anchor investment in the UK, Forseven”. So… Montezemelo is a director for the road car bit of McLaren, not the F1 bit. But CVYN still has a non-controlling stake in the F1 bit. So, that’s cleared up.

It’s a fascinating switch from a man who was a die-hard tifosi, and from a man who pretty much turned around Ferrari’s road car fortunes in the late Nineties. He famously said the Ferrari 348 – built just before he sat down in the Big Boss Chair, was “the worst product Ferrari had developed for some time”.

He set about transforming that into the superb 355. Also had a hand in helping a certain Michael Schumacher dominate Formula One in the early Noughties.

McLaren’s road cars are consistently brilliant, but it’s struggled to make money. And with the potential spectre of an SUV lurking, is Montezemelo there to make sure McLaren keeps making world-beating supercars and not get side-tracked? Like we said, this is interesting…