Somehow ended up being far more impressive than I first thought! What a crazy night that was

Storms over the Midlands are SUPER impressive right now. Amazing scenes!

Couldn't believe how rapidly this cell over Nuneaton was rising!

Some lightning over Nuneaton area, scaring off all the birds 😂

Heyyyy look who it is!! 😄

This is the slightly higher resolution image from my friend, shows AMR26 on the label

I was told by the person standing beside me that it had 'AMR26' on the label. I'll see if I can get a pic but unfortunately my camera just couldn't catch the smaller writing

4. Their standard options(like the ones you mentioned) mainly use widebody aircraft, so despite the age and smokiness of this aircraft it was probably still greener than sending a 777-F to Birmingham, Barcelona and then back to its base!

Probably a bit of a headache for them 😅

1. They missed the original deadline, so had to arrange alternative transport.
2. Transport had to be quick to make Thurs/Fri testing
3. Cargo being unusual size and shape meant it required either a large cargo door or rear/front entrance to load/unload

As for the why, you were correct on this being unusual. DHL, Atlas, Cargolux and Qatar are the typical choices for F1's cargo, but I suspect there are 4 reasons they used this aircraft;

Yep! Feel free to use these pics elsewhere, I'm not on many other platforms so don't worry about that. Just happy to help with info

Couple more pics to compare the size of the mystery box to people and vehicles.

Not sure on the proportions of the car relative to the aircraft, but the cargo was definitely related to Aston Martin and their F1 car!

Lucky to have seen it on its last visit to Manchester, UK. Really is a stunning livery!

Can confirm that small cell in there was very real, just driven straight through it!

Limited view of the top of the currently developing Wolverhampton storm. Very high