McLaren-Honda conducted its essential pre-season filming day at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya earlier this week. While the term ‘filming day’ has become a bit of an F1 euphemism, it’s an invaluable opportunity for the team and its partners to get as much footage as possible in the can for the year ahead

Just don’t think of the filming day as a dressed-up test. In fact, there’s very little driving – it’s more about conjuring up some movie magic. 

If you’ve ever set foot on a sound-stage, or witnessed a TV show or a movie being filmed, you quickly appreciate that what’s in front of the camera is the thin end of the wedge, a veneer of make-believe that’s serviced by an army of people – usually dressed in black puffa jackets – and several tonnes of expensive equipment.

Our Barcelona filming was just our opportunity to get a little ‘showbiz’. And it’s not just track action that we’re capturing – we film the engineers, dynamic shots of the pitstops and the garage, as well as a wide range of trackside and onboard moving and still footage. In fact, we get everything we need to tell the McLaren-Honda story through 2015.

 Check out our gallery for a taste of F1 showbiz…