Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren MP4-25

Active years: 1963-present

History

The second-oldest team in Formula 1 today, McLaren was formed by New Zealand racer Bruce McLaren before his death in 1970. Four years later the team won its first world championship with Emerson Fittipaldi, and a second came in 1976 courtesy of James Hunt.

But the Teddy Mayer-run outfit fell down the grid before a takeover by Ron Dennis in the early 1980s. The outfit pioneered the carbon fibre chassis and became the dominant force in F1 from 1984 until the early nineties. After splitting with Honda it found a new engine partner in Mercedes and added further championships in 1998 and 1999.

More might have followed in 2007 but the team was implicated in a scandal over alleged spying on rivals Ferrari. Given a record fine of $100m the team were thrown out of the constructors’ championship and both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso lost the drivers’ title at the last round by one point each. The team bounced back to win the drivers’ title with Hamilton in 2008.

Headquarters

Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom

Major team personnel

Team principal: Martin Whitmarsh
Managing director: Jonathan Neale
Engineering director: Paddy Lowe
Chief engineer: Tim Goss
Chief mechanic: Peter Vale
Head of aerodynamics: John Iley
Head of vehicle engineering: Mark Williams
Principal race engineer: Phil Prew
Race engineer (Jenson Button): Jakob Andreasen
Race engineer (Lewis Hamilton): Andy Latham

Previous identities: None

Drivers

Complete list of Mclaren F1 drivers

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