When a Formula 1 team puts its brand on a blockchain, it is news. When that team then joins the blockchain's governing council, it is a signal. McLaren Racing has done both with Hedera, and the MCL / COLLECT digital collectibles program is the most visible piece of the partnership — free-to-claim drops timed to real race weekends, built on the Hedera Token Service, landing in fans' HashPack wallets. Here is how the program actually works, and why the network choice matters more than the artwork.
In January 2026, McLaren Racing announced a multi-year partnership with the Hedera Foundation. Under the agreement, Hedera became an Official Partner of the McLaren Formula 1 Team and the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team, with branding on the cars, driver race suits and team kit. The commercial layer, though, was never the point: the deal centers on officially licensed digital activations tied to live race weekends, starting with a digital collectibles program on Hedera.
Two months later, in March 2026, McLaren Racing went a step further and joined the Hedera Council — the term-limited body of up to 39 institutions that runs the network's nodes and steers its direction, alongside Google, IBM, Deutsche Telekom, Boeing, Ubisoft and others. That moved McLaren from sponsor to network governor, a rare position for a consumer sports brand. (We covered how the council works in our Hedera Governing Council explainer.)
The program has two parallel tracks, and both share the same design philosophy: every drop is free, and every drop is anchored to a real race.
Formula 1 — MCL / COLLECT. The F1 program launched at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, with further drops at races through the season. Each release is a set of six free digital artworks in a distinct art style, claimable during that Grand Prix weekend. Completing a full set enters fans into prize draws for experiences such as McLaren Technology Centre tours and signed merchandise, and claimed items can be traded on a secondary marketplace to fill gaps in a set.
IndyCar — Arrow McLaren drops. Arrow McLaren ran collectibles in earlier seasons on other rails; the Hedera deal brought the program back for 2026 as a five-drop series. Drop 2 of 5 — the "MCL / COLLECT / TOR GP" artwork for the Canadian round in mid-August — was claimed free at collectibles.mclaren.com, with no purchase and no crypto required up front. The IndyCar calendar runs out fast: after the Streets of Washington round on August 23 and the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader on August 29–30, the season closes at Laguna Seca on September 6, with the remaining drops timed to those weekends.
The claim flow is deliberately frictionless: fans claim on the McLaren site, connect a wallet — HashPack is the practical default — and the collectible lands in their account. No gas estimates, no failed transactions, no upfront cost.
McLaren's team did not pick a general-purpose smart-contract chain for this, and the reasons are specific to how the network works:
There is also a sustainability angle McLaren can point to: the network has published third-party assessments showing it operates in a carbon-negative position, which matters to a sport under constant environmental scrutiny.
Claimed collectibles land in a Hedera-compatible wallet, and HashPack is where most of them end up. It is the most widely used wallet on the network, and McLaren's claim flow connects to it through ECDSA accounts, which are EVM-compatible. Notably, HashPack's co-founder and CEO authored HIP-412, the metadata standard behind Hedera NFTs — which is why the McLaren artwork renders correctly across wallets and marketplaces rather than showing broken images. HashPack also subsidizes account creation, so a new fan claiming their first collectible does not pay a setup cost.
From Hedera's side, that is the real point of the program: every claim is a wallet activated by a mainstream sports brand rather than by a crypto marketing campaign. Distribution like this reaches people no exchange listing reaches — which is also why wallet-level analytics, like the holder breakdowns in Wallet HQ and the large-transfer feed in Whale Radar, get more interesting as programs like this scale.
For Hedera, the partnership is a concrete, consumer-facing reference case: a globally recognized team running live, event-driven activations in production — not a pilot, not a press release. It pairs naturally with the enterprise work the network is known for; our guide to what HBAR is actually used for covers that institutional side.
Two honest caveats. First, digital collectibles — even free, officially licensed ones — are a niche within the network's total transaction mix, and claims spikes on race weekends do not translate into steady protocol revenue. Second, none of this is a statement about the HBAR price. As of August 31, 2026, HBAR trades around $0.074 with a market cap near $3.3 billion (CoinGecko), down roughly 87% from its 2021 all-time high — the collectibles program is a real-world-usage story, not a price story.
If you want to watch network activity — including token mints and transfers — as programs like this run, the live boards on HBAR Pulse are the fastest way in, and the beginner's guide to Hedera and HBAR explains the mechanics underneath.
Are the McLaren collectibles free? Yes. Every drop in both the Formula 1 MCL / COLLECT series and the Arrow McLaren IndyCar series is free to claim during its race weekend — no purchase, and no crypto needed up front.
Where do I claim McLaren digital collectibles? At collectibles.mclaren.com, McLaren's official collectibles site, during the relevant race weekend's claim window.
Do I need a wallet to claim? You need a Hedera-compatible wallet to hold the collectible, and HashPack is the default supported by the claim flow. New accounts are easy to create, and account-creation costs are subsidized.
Are McLaren collectibles NFTs on Hedera? They are digital collectibles issued as native Hedera tokens via the Hedera Token Service, using the HIP-412 metadata standard that Hedera NFT marketplaces and wallets read. Functionally they behave like NFTs — unique, ownable, tradable — without a custom smart contract.
When did McLaren join Hedera? McLaren Racing announced the multi-year Hedera Foundation partnership in January 2026 and joined the Hedera Council with voting rights in March 2026.
Is HBAR a good buy because of McLaren? That is a different question, and nobody can answer it for you. A consumer partnership is one data point about real-world usage; it is not a price forecast. Do your own research.
This article is for information only, not financial advice.