All you need to know about McLaren.
Born: 1963
Nationality: British.
New Zealander Bruce McLaren came to Europe at the end of the 1950s after winning his country's first "Driver to Europe" scholarship. When he got his first Formula One Cooper works drive, his team leader was Jack Brabham, so world class driving was part of his immediate environment.
He led the team himself from 1962 to 1965, during which period he also founded Bruce McLaren Motor Racing that became the foundation of today's TAG McLaren Group.
McLaren's own racing career was tragically short. After starting his international success run at the US Grand Prix in 1959, he competed in a total of 37 Grand Prix with his own company, piloting its first race win in 1968 in a McLaren-Ford. Two years later he was killed in Goodwood on a Can-AM testing drive.
In 1974, Emerson Fittipaldi won McLaren its first Constructors Championship in the McLaren-Ford M23, and two years' later James Hunt gave them their first driver's title in the same car.
The McLaren name became synonymous with countless high-profile racers during the 1970s, with Grand Prix winners including Denny Hulme, Peter Rewson, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jochen Mass, James Hunt, and John Watson. Other major names who drove for the team included Dan Gurney, Jackie Oliver, Jody Scheckter, Jacky Ickx, Mike Hailwood and Giles Villeneuve.
In 1980, the original company merged with Ron Dennis's Project Four racing company to form McLaren International, and five years later the TAG (Techniques d'Avant Garde) Group took a major shareholding. TAG financed the development and building of a turbocharged engine in 1983, and the following season McLaren won the Constructors' World Championship with Niki Lauda becoming World Champion. To date the team has achieved 137 Formula One victories, 11 Drivers' World Championships, eight Constructors' World Championships and 114 pole positions out of a total of 559 times competing in a Formula 1 race.
In 1995, the team entered the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race with an F1 GTR model, driven by Frenchman Yannick Dalmas, the former Finnish Formula 1 driver JJ Lehto and Masanori Sekiya. They took the chequered flag, becoming the first manufacturer to win in its inaugural year. Two years later, a pair of GTRs took second and third places, one of them winning the GT Category.
In 1998, McLaren set the record for the world's fastest production road car, its F1, with a speed of over 240 mph. Just 100 of the cars were built, 64 of which were straight road cars, five were special Le Mans commemorative versions, three were GT models, and the remaining 28 were GTR race cars built for private racing customers.
In 1999, DaimlerChrysler, which supplies the engines to McLaren racing cars, announced a deal for the joint development of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren super sports car, which was launched at the last Frankfurt Motor Show. In 2000, DaimlerChrysler took a 40 per cent shareholding in TAG McLaren.
Just a few weeks ago, the first limited press launch of the SLR McLaren was held in Cape Town, South Africa, and made the news for all the wrong reasons, after one of the 500,000 machines was crunched by a VW Golf.
Best Car: Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren
Worst Car: At this level, they can't afford to build one.
Weirdest Car: Many would say the F1, but only because they can't handle a steering wheel in the middle.