For the sake of completeness here's my potted history of the McLaren team.
McLaren Mercedes
FIA Entry Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
Drivers
Car 3: Lewis Hamilton
Car 4: Jenson Button
Engine Mercedes V8
Team Principal: Martin Whitmarsh
Managing Director: Jonathan Neale
Engineering Director: Paddy Lowe
Design & Development Director: Neil Oatley
Race Engineer Car 3: Andy Latham
Race Engineer Car 4: Dave Robson
Stats as of end 2010
First Entered 1966
Races Entered 685
Race Wins 169
Pole Positions 146
Fastest Laps 143
Driver World Championships 12
Constructor World Championships 8
Team History
Only Ferrari have a longer history in F1 than McLaren and their record of race wins is 2nd only to the famous Italian team. Over the years many great drivers have driven for them and many future World Champions made their début in McLaren cars including Jody Scheckter and Alain Prost.
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing
In 1963, New Zealand born racing driver Bruce McLaren set up a company to build cars to enter into the Tasman race series. McLaren won the 1964 Tasman series whilst also driving in F1 for the Cooper team. In 1966, at Monaco, the first F1 McLaren, the M2B, debuted. The car retired but it began the history of one of the most famous and successful F1 teams of all time.
Bruce won the teams first race in Belgium in 1968 and Denny Hulme took back to back wins that same season in Italy and Canada. 1969 saw Hulme win the Mexican Grand Prix and 1970 started well for the team with both Hulme and McLaren taking 2nd places before McLaren was killed testing a CanAm car at Goodwood.
Teddy Mayer, who had been with McLaren when the team was set up in 1963, took over as team manager and oversaw the 1970's.
Yardley & Marlboro McLaren
1970 and '71 were both lean years for the team and they didn't win another race until Hulme crossed the line first in South Africa in 1972. 1973 saw introduction of the Gordon Coppuck designed M23. Hulme won one race and Peter Revson 2 giving the team 3rd place in the WCC. Emerson Fittipaldi joined Hulme for 1974, won 3 races to Hulme's 1 and took the Drivers Championship as well as the Constructors title.
Continuing with the M23 into 1975 the team won 3 more races, 2 for Fittipaldi and 1 for Jochen Mass. Fittipaldi left in 1976 and his seat was taken by James Hunt. Hunt won 6 races and, at the final round in Japan, finished 3rd to take the driver title. The McLaren team continued with the M23 into 1977 before replacing it with the M26.
The late 70's was a period of decline for McLaren. The M26 won 3 races, all in James Hunt's hands, but it's replacements, the M28 and M29 didn't manage a single victory.
McLaren International
At the end of the 1980 season Ron Dennis' Project 4 racing team, with some encouragement from mutual sponsor Marlboro, was merged with McLaren and McLaren International was born. With designer John Barnard McLaren gave F1 the first fully carbon fibre car and with John Watson at the wheel they won their first race since 1977 at Silverstone in 1981. The merger of the teams resulted in a revision of the car numbering system with the MP4 prefix being used.
1982 saw Niki Lauda make a comeback to F1 and he and Watson won 2 races each in the MP4/1 and the team finished 2nd in the Constructors Championship. 1983 was the last season for McLaren with the Cosworth DFV engine and mid-season the team moved to a Porsche built TAG engine. The team won only one race, Watson taking the winners laurels at Long Beach.
TAG Turbo
1984 saw Watson replaced by Alain Prost who had previously raced for the team in 1980. Lauda and Prost dominated the season finishing 1-2 in the driver championship, winning 12 of the 16 races, 7 for Prost and 5 for Lauda, and scored nearly 3 times as many points as 2nd placed Ferrari in the Constructors Championship.
1985 saw Prost win the first of his 4 Drivers Championships whilst Niki Lauda bowed out of F1 for a 2nd time with only a single win through the course of the season. Keke Rosberg partnered Prost for 1986 and Prost won his 2nd consecutive title (the first driver to do this since Jack Brabham in 1959/60) at the last race of the season.
McLaren's final season with TAG engines in 1987 was dogged by poor reliability. Prost won 3 races but team mate Stefan Johansson could only manage a best finish of 2nd.
Honda
Ayrton Senna joined Prost in 1988 and the team moved to Honda power. It was an astonishingly successful period for McLaren cars with Prost winning the drivers title in '89 and Senna in '88, '90 and '91. In 1988 McLaren won 15 of the 16 races, only missing out on a clean sweep when Senna crashed into Jean Louis Schlesser in Italy whilst leading. McLaren won 43 Grands Prix and the constructors title 4 seasons in a row. Prost left acrimoniously for Ferrari at the end of 1990 and his replacement, Gerhard Berger, contributed only a single win in Japan in 1991.
Senna won 3 races in 1992, the last season of Honda power but the McLaren was no match for the all conquering Williams FW14B. For 1993 McLaren returned to Cosworth power. Senna won 4 races and finished 2nd in the drivers Championship to arch Rival Alain Prost, now at Williams.
1994 was a season of transition. Senna left to join Williams and Peugeot replaced Cosworth as the engine supplier. McLaren failed to win a single race but it was the first full season for Mika Hakkinen at the team.
Mercedes
From 1995 through to today McLaren have used Mercedes engines. Nigel Mansell was listed to driver for the team in 1995 but found the car too small for him and he was replaced by Mark Blundell.
1995 and 1996 were barren seasons for the team and were also the last with Marlboro as title sponsors.
West McLaren Mercedes
In new silver and black livery for 1997 David Coulthard, having joined the team in 1996, retuned the team to the winners circle in Australia. Coulthard won the Italian Grand Prix that same season and Hakkinen took his first race win at the last race of the season at the European Grand Prix in Jerez.
1998 saw the team win their most recent Constructors title and Hakkinen took back to back Drivers titles in '98 and 1999 with Adrian Newey designed cars. 2000 and 2001 saw Hakkinen and Coulthard continue as drivers and although winning races the team were up against Michael Schumacher and the dominant Ferrari team.
Kimi Raikkonen replaced Hakkinen in 2002 ending F1's longest team/driver partnership. Coulthard managed only a single win, although the dominance of Ferrari in 2002 meant all other teams were left left to feed on scraps. 2003 saw the introduction of the MP4-18 car which proved problematic and the team had to revert to a D version of the MP4-17 car for the entire season. Despite this Coulthard won the season opener in Australia, Raikkonen took his first Grand Prix victory in Brazil and was still in contention for the drivers title until the last race of the season.
The MP4-18 was re-designated as the MP19 for 2004 but had to be radically re-designed during the season and redefined as B spec. Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix in the revised car but it was to be McLaren’s only success that year.
2005 saw Juan Pablo Montoya replace Coulthard and the MP4/20 proved far more successful than it's predecessor. Raikkonen won 7 races, Montoya 3 and the team finished 2nd in the Constructors race to Renault. McLaren didn't win any races in 2006, the first time for 10 years, and it was a turbulent time with the cars suffering from poor reliability and Adrian Newey threatening to leave for Jaguar destabilising the team. Montoya left the team before the end of the season to race in NASCAR and Raikkonen left for Ferrari after the final race.
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
2007 saw McLaren partner 2006 World Champion Fernando Alonso with McLaren protégée Lewis Hamilton. It proved to be an even more turbulent year than 2006 as in-fighting between the drivers created tension in the team and McLaren were stripped of their Constructors Championship points having been found guilty by the FIA of using technical data illegally acquired from Ferrari. Despite all the problems both drivers won 4 races and at the season finale in Brazil each had a chance to win the Drivers Title. Ultimately Kimi Raikkonen won the Championship for Ferrari and McLaren and Alonso agreed to terminate their contract for 2008.
Heikki Kovaleinen joined Hamilton at McLaren for 2008 and scored his first GP victory in Hungary. Hamilton eventually beat Felipe Massa to the Drivers Championship taking 5th place two corners from the the end of the final race of the season to win the title by a single point and, at the time, becoming the youngest Champion.
New regulations for 2009 saw McLaren struggle and Ron Dennis stood down as Team Principal being replaced by Martin Whitmarsh. Hamilton still managed two race wins and the team finished 3rd in the Constructors Championship.
2009 World Drivers Champion Jenson Button joined McLaren from Brawn for 2010 to partner Hamilton, giving the team an all British driver line up for the first time in it's history. The team won 5 races (3 for Hamilton and 2 for Button). Both drivers were challenging for the title late into the season but lost out to Red Bull's Sebastien Vettel in the final race of the season. McLaren finished 2nd in the Constructors Championship.
2011 sees the team continue with the same driver line up and a new car, the MP4/26.
