Overview

www.mclaren.co.uk

McLaren is one of the most iconic and reputable names in modern motorsport, and has a track record to match. A total of twenty titles (twelve drivers and eight constructors) is testament to the team's famously thorough approach, and the British outfit remains the second most successful - and second longest serving - in the sport's history, maintaining an intense rivalry with Italian competitors Ferrari.

Founded by Kiwi racing driver Bruce McLaren in 1963, the team first ran a series of custom-built Coopers in the Tasman series, with some success. Having also dabbled in sports cars, Bruce decided to make the leap to Formula One in 1966. The car was underpowered, but scored the team's maiden point at Silverstone. However, the team had to wait until 1968 to be truly competitive with the Ford DFV engine. At that year's Belgian Grand Prix, Bruce McLaren became on of the select group of men to win a race for his own team. Team-mate Denny Hulme scored three victories over the next two seasons, but the ultimate prize remained out of reach.

Sadly, Bruce didn't have time to wait. McLaren had been competing (with excellent results) in the Can-Am sports car series, and when testing the team's new challenger at Goodwood in 1970, the team's founder lost control and was killed. Rallying under Teddy Mayer, the team squad a long wait to be competitive once more. The drought ended at the 1972 South African Grand Prix, and over the next two years the team scored numerous grand prix victories at the hands of Hulme and Peter Revson. By now McLaren were ready to hit their stride, and in 1974 new signing Emerson Fittipaldi took three wins and gave the team their first drivers' and constructors' titles. British home hero James Hunt followed it up with a scrappy second championship in 1976, defeating Ferrari's Niki Lauda by a single point. Unfortunately the team soon slipped in to decline, and fell down the order embarassingly quickly during the remainder of the seventies.

At the start of the eighties, the ailing McLaren merged with Ron Dennis' Project Four Racing. The first year of the partnership saw the team finish a distant ninth in the standings with John Watson and rookie Alain Prost at the wheel, but in 1981 Watson returned the team to the winner's circle at the British Grand Prix, and sporadic victories continued in subsequent years. Hiring retired former champion Niki Lauda proved shrewd, and in 1984 the Austrian delivered the title for a third time by half a point from team-mate Prost. It was to be the young Frenchman who then took over the McLaren challenge, winning two drivers' and a single constructors' title over the next two years to put the orange and white cars back at the top of the sport. After a brief interlude by Williams in 1987, the team signed rising star Ayrton Senna to partner Prost in the unstoppable MP4/4 for 1988. The team won fifteen of sixteen races (a strike rate which has never been bettered) and Senna the title. The following year the wins continued, and Prost won a third championship for the team after an acrimonious collision with the Brazilian at the final round.

When the relationship between their drivers soured at the end of the eighties, Prost jumped ship to Ferrari. This meant that Senna was undisputed team leader heading into the nineties, and he wore the mantle well. Again fighting Prost for the title, he punted the Frenchman off at the very first corner in the title-deciding Japanese Grand Prix, and wrestled back the crown. A third title for Senna ensued in 1991, as the Brazilian saw off the challenge of the resurgent Williams team. However, McLaren were soon deprived of Honda power - and the Grove based squad seized the initiative. Despite numerous masterful performances, Senna could not compete with Mansell and Prost as they took the titles back to Grove.

Senna left to join Williams in 1994 (sadly crashing to his death in the third round at Imola) and the team slipped into uncompetitiveness, with the first year of a new engine partnership with Mercedes yielding only two podiums in 1995. Still, the seeds had been sown for a new era of success, and by 1997 the newly-silver cars were winning again in the hands of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard. Williams remained the dominant players, but that stopped in 1998 as the Woking based squad - with the help fo technical guru Adrian Newey - stepped up a gear to win both titles: the drivers' for Hakkinen, and the constructor's for the team. It remains their latest victory in the team's competition, although Hakkinen did win a second title the following year.

The noughties ushered in a new period of domination by Ferrari, which had been threatening McLaren's position throughout their two championship years. With Schumacher at the helm, they finally overcome the their British rivals in 2000 - and remained dominant in the sport until 2004, although new McLaren signing Kimi Raikkonen did manage to take the ageing MP4/17D to within two points of the title in 2003. The team remained by and large Schumacher's biggest threat throughout the period, but when Ferrari's efforts finally foundered, it was the Fernando Alonso and Renault who came to the fore. Raikkonen again put up a brave title fight in 2005, but the Spaniard won the first of two back-to-back titles.

In 2007, McLaren signed Alonso - and put him alongside rookie Lewis Hamilton in a partnership which quickly erupted. The pair fought bitterly over the title and ended up losing out to the Ferrari's new star Raikkonen, a pill made harder to swallow by the team's disqualification from the constructors' championship for stealing information from their Italian rivals. Alonso left rapidly at the end of the season, and when the poisonous atmosphere subsided Hamilton was able to win the 2008 world title by a whisker, McLaren's first triumph in either category in nine years. The squad's title defence fell apart in 2009 over a misinterpretation of new regulations.

For 2010, McLaren lost their Mercedes factory status as the German manufacturer established their own team and signed returning former world chamopion Michael Schumacher. In response, they assembled an all British line-up of 2008 world champion Hamilton and 2009 world champion Jenson Button, who had finally emerged at the forefront of the sport having driven the cleverly designed Brawn BGP001 to title glory. The partnership won five races in its maiden year, with both drivers challenging for the title until the penultimate round in Brazil. The following year the team went one better with six victories (three each), proving the closest challenger to the dominant Red Bull team, which had risen from the midfield in the hands of Woking defector Adrian Newey and extraordinary young hotshot Sebastian Vettel.

For 2012, the team maintains its double world champion line-up in the hope of preventing Vettel strolling to a third consecutive triumph. Having not failed to win a race in fifteen years, the team clearly has the pedigree and the experience needed to launch another assault on the world title - and the quality of their drivers and engine package is undisputed. Now the team needs to see if it can overcome the genius of their former technical director and produce a machine which enables their two drivers to fight for the title once more, and potentially bring McLaren their first team trophy for fourteen long years.