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Team McLaren Mercedes
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Woking , Surrey , United Kingdom
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Ron Dennis
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TBD
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3 Kimi Räikkönen <br /> 4 Juan Pablo Montoya
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Pedro De La Rosa <br /> Gary Paffett
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McLaren MP4-21
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Mercedes-Benz FO 108S
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Michelin
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1966 Monaco Grand Prix
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599
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8 (1974, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998)
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11 (1974, 1976, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999)
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147
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122
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124
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2005
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, founded in 1963 by
Bruce McLaren (1937–1970), is a racing team based in
Woking ,
England , which is best known as a
Formula One constructor but has also competed in the
Indianapolis 500-Mile Race ,
Canadian-American Challenge Cup , and
24 Hours Of Le Mans . Its full title is currently '''Team McLaren Mercedes''' and will become '''Vodafone McLaren Mercedes''' from January 2007 following a sponsorship deal announced in December 2005. The team is managed by
Ron Dennis and is controlled by
McLaren Racing , a member of the
McLaren Group .
In 1990
McLaren Cars was founded to produce road going cars based on the team's racing expertise.
McLaren is one of the most successful teams in Formula One, having won more Grands Prix than any constructor except
Ferrari and numerous
World Drivers' and
World Constructors' Championships. When account is taken of the period of competition, McLaren emerge as the most successful team with 11 drivers' and 8 constructors' championships since 1966.
in his M7A in 1967]]
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was founded in 1963 by New Zealander
Bruce McLaren . The amiable Kiwi made the team’s Grand Prix debut at the 1966 Monaco race. However, Bruce’s race was rather short lived due to a terminal oil leak on the car.
In 1966 and 1967, the team raced only one car in the Championship with Bruce behind the wheel. In addition to his Grand Prix duties, Bruce also contested the
Can Am Championship that year and alongside team mate
Denny Hulme , the pair won five out of the season’s six races.
In 1968 the team consisted of two drivers including reigning Formula One World Champion Denny Hulme who also drove for McLaren in Can Am that year. Bruce won the non-championship Race of Champions at the
Brands Hatch circuit, then the
Belgian Grand Prix was the scene of the team's first Championship win.
A further three podium finishes followed for Bruce in 1969, while he and Hulme won each round of the Can Am Championship.
As a team, McLaren had a disastrous beginning to the decade, with the death of team boss Bruce McLaren while testing the latest CanAm car at Goodwood. Despite this immense setback, they pulled together and achieved notable successes in several formulae, including CanAm, Formula 1,
Formula 2 ,
IndyCar and
F5000 .
McLaren decided to abandon the CanAm series at the end of the 1972 season, focussing solely on Formula 1 and IndyCar. This decision turned out to be the right one: in 1974 they achieved their first
Formula One World Constructors' and
World Drivers' Championship (with
Emerson Fittipaldi ) and their first Indianapolis 500 win (with
Johnny Rutherford ). The Drivers' Championship would come their way again in 1976 with
James Hunt , as would their second 500 victory (again with Rutherford), becoming the first team to twice accomplish both feats in the same year.
McLaren finally ended their IndyCar involvement at the end of the 1979 season after increasingly poor returns from the series.
The current McLaren F1 team resulted from a merger of the McLaren team and
Ron Dennis ' personal Formula 2 team, called Project 4, in 1981. This has caused some confusion among fans of the sport, as all McLaren cars since 1981 have carried the designation "MP4-xx." In this case the "P4" comes from Project 4, and has no relation to the generation of chassis.
In fact, "MP4" stood for 'Marlboro Project 4', so that the full title of the cars 'McLaren MP4-xx' reflected not only the historical name of the team, but also the names of the team's major sponsor and the team's new component part.
The team's cars still carry the MP4 tag, and it is worth noting that in their post-tobacco era, (and, more surprisingly perhaps, even when sponsored by rival tobacco brand West), there is still a vestige of that Marlboro sponsorship. It delimited in the slash "''/''" before 1996(MP4/11), and it came to delimit by the hyphen "''-''" after 1997(MP4-12).
in an MP4/8 victorious at Monaco in 1993]]
The most successful period in McLaren's history came under the early leadership of Ron Dennis.
John Barnard designed the revolutionary MP4/1 chassis, the first F1 chassis made entirely of
Carbon-fibre Composites , which proved very strong when mated to the
TAG /
Porsche Turbo engine. A succession of strong drivers helped, with
Niki Lauda ,
Alain Prost ,
Keke Rosberg , and
Stefan Johansson driving for the team in this period. McLaren-Porsche won the Constructors' title in 1984 (with Lauda taking the Drivers' crown), and 1985 (with Prost winning his first world title). McLaren did not win the Constructors' Championship in 1986, although Prost took the drivers' title again.
After losing the previous two Constructors titles to
Williams in 1986 and 1987, McLaren was able to convince
Honda to switch its backing from Williams starting in 1988. The McLaren-Honda won an amazing 15 of 16 races that year and leading all but 27 laps, achieving a staggering and unbeaten record to this date. (Senna had been leading comfortably at Monza, but collided with back-marker
Jean-Louis Schlesser 's Williams.)
Ayrton Senna took the driver's title that season, his first with the Woking marque. The next year, using a new 3.5L atmospheric engine designed by Honda, McLaren again won both titles, with Alain Prost clinching it in
Japan after a highly-controversial collision with his teammate Senna. This was the culmination of a vitriolic feud between the two men.
Alain Prost left to join the
Ferrari team in 1990. Nevertheless, McLaren continued to dominate Formula One for the next two seasons, with Senna winning the World Drivers' Championship in 1990 and 1991, and McLaren taking the constructors title in both of those years. New teammate
Gerhard Berger helped to ensure this double success.
From 1992 onwards, McLaren fell into a decline. After the thorough dominance of the
Renault -powered
Williams in 1992, Honda left Formula One. McLaren switched to
Ford engines. While these proved suitable in the hands of Senna, American
Michael Andretti 's season was a disaster, scoring only a handful of points. He was replaced before the end of the year by Finnish youngster
Mika Häkkinen . In 1994, Senna departed for Williams, and
Martin Brundle joined Häkkinen in new
Peugeot -powered cars. The results were unimpressive, and Peugeot was dropped after a single year in favour of the promising new
Mercedes-Benz engine. But 1995 was even worse than 1994, with the radical MP4/10 proving to be too heavy and slow. Former world-champion
Nigel Mansell came to the team in 1995, but had a torrid time - he was unable to fit into the car at first - and retired after just two races.
1996 was the end of an era for McLaren, as they parted company with long-term sponsors
Marlboro , and the famous red and white McLaren livery disappeared from Formula One to be replaced with
West branding and a silver Mercedes livery.
Despite the struggles of 1996, the Mercedes engine came good in the end. While Williams dominated F1 in 1996 and 1997, McLaren made slow, careful strides with its Mercedes engine and drivers Häkkinen and
David Coulthard . Coulthard made a promising start to the
1997 Formula One Season by winning the
Australian Grand Prix . The car was not good enough to consistently win grands prix, although Coulthard also won the
Italian Grand Prix . During 1997 McLaren poached Williams' talented designer,
Adrian Newey . Then Mika Häkkinen offered a taste of things to come with his victory in the final race of the 1997 season, the
European Grand Prix .
The fact that McLaren now had Adrian Newey on board, coupled with the withdrawal of Renault at the end of 1997, meant that McLaren was now perfectly positioned to strike. In 1998 the McLaren was once again able to regularly challenge for Grand Prix victories, winning nine grands prix that year. Häkkinen took the Drivers' Championship in 1998, scoring 100 points, and McLaren took the Constructors' Championship in 1998. Häkkinen took the title again in 1999, but the season was more difficult for the team who lost the Constructors' Championship to
Ferrari .
's MP4-19 into the garage during qualifying for the
US Grand Prix at
Indianapolis in 2004]]
2000 was another closely-fought season, but ultimately
Ferrari 's
Michael Schumacher prevailed.
Since 2000, McLaren has struggled somewhat to regain its place at the top of Formula One, partly due to a perceived lack of pace from the Mercedes engine. In
2001 , Mika Häkkinen dropped off the pace in comparison with Coulthard, although neither driver could compete with the now dominant combination of
Michael Schumacher and
Ferrari . In
2002 Häkkinen took a sabbatical (which turned into retirement), opening the way for promising compatriot
Kimi Räikkönen to take his place. McLaren only captured four wins over the following three seasons. 2002 saw just a single win at
Monaco for Coulthard.
2003 started very promisingly, with wins at the two first grands prix of the year, one each for Coulthard and Räikkönen. However, rival teams soon caught up as McLaren was severely hampered in by the development of the MP4-18, a radical new design which due to reliability problems never raced in anger. This forced the team to use the year-old MP4-17D, a very severe handicap in modern Formula One racing. However, despite this, Räikkönen finished in the points consistently and challenged Michael Schumacher for the championship all the way up to the very last race, eventually losing the title by only 2 points.
The team began the
2004 Formula One Season with the MP4-19, which technical director Adrian Newey described as a "debugged version of the MP4-18." This proved to be anything but the case, and a new car was required by mid-season. The MP4-19B was basically an all new car with a radically redesigned aerodynamic package. The fact that Coulthard qualified third for its first race, the
French Grand Prix , gave the team hope of a better end to the season which was realised when Räikkönen took a famous victory at the
2004 Belgian Grand Prix ahead of
Michael Schumacher .
Colombian driver and former CART champion
Juan Pablo Montoya was named as Coulthard's replacement for the 2005 season, partnering the ever more impressive Räikkönen. Montoya's season didn't get off to a dream start, as he had to be replaced for two races by test drivers
Pedro De La Rosa and
Alexander Wurz after sustaining an injury. McLaren were comparatively lacklustre in the first few races of 2005, losing a lot of ground to
Renault in both championships. This was, however, to change at the San Marino Grand Prix, where McLaren seemed to have the quickest car on the grid. Sadly Raikkonen was subject to a driveshaft failure to let through
Fernando Alonso to win the race.
While McLaren were able to maintain this distinct speed advantage over the
Renaults for most of 2005, the general reliability of the car proved to be a thorn in the team's side, costing them a number of race victories when Raikkonen had been leading or in contention to win. Renault (and
Fernando Alonso in particular) were able to capitalise on the McLarens' breakdowns, proving the advantage of reliability over raw speed. However, after Alonso clinched the Driver's title in Brazil, he and the Renault team abandoned their conservative approach and vowed to take the fight to McLaren for the Constructors' crown. By common consent the Renault R-25 was a close match for the McLaren MP4-20 at the penultimate Japanese Grand Prix and at the Chinese Grand Prix, where the unfortunate Montoya hit a loose drain cover and retired from the race, effectively ending McLaren's chances of winning the Constructors' World Championship title.
Reflecting on an exciting and competitive but ultimately frustrating season for the team, Ron Dennis remarked that ''"We feel our championship efforts were thwarted by our conservative approach to the first four races."''
On the 19th of December 2005, the team announced the signing of the 2005 World Drivers' Champion
Fernando Alonso to drive for the team from the 2007 Formula One season...Kimi has been related to Ferrari but speculation says that he will stay with the Mclaren side for 2007
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McLaren had one of the longest standing title sponsorship arrangements in sport with
Philip Morris through their
Marlboro brand. The relationship dated back to 1974 and was continuous from 1981 to 1996, when Marlboro transferred to
Ferrari .
Imperial Tobacco (through its
West brand) was the title sponsor of McLaren from 1997 until
July 29 2005 , after which McLaren were obliged to seek a new principal sponsor due to a European Union directive banning tobacco advertising.
On brand, the most popular brand of
Whisky worldwide. "Johnnie Walker" titles and "walking man" images were applied to the team's cars (either side of the air intake) for the
Hungarian Grand Prix , however "Johnnie Walker" is not to be part of the team name. The team will therefore be known as 'Team McLaren Mercedes' until the end of 2006. Following the announcement of a title sponsorship deal in December 2005 the team will be known as 'Vodafone McLaren Mercedes' from the 2007 season
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On
March 8 2006 , Team McLaren Mercedes announced that
Emirates Airlines would join McLaren for the
2006 Formula One Season in a one-year deal. This deal was reportedly worth between $20-$25 Million.
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