McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

McLaren was founded in 1963 by New Zealand racing driver Bruce McLaren, who initially built his own sports cars before the team entered Formula 1 in 1966. After a modest start, the team achieved its first successes towards the end of the 1960s, before Bruce McLaren was killed in 1970 while testing a CanAm car at Goodwood in England. Teddy Mayer took over the leadership and guided the team to its first world championships a few years later.

The cars’ enduring name MP4 dates back to the merger with Ron Dennis’ Formula 2 team Project Four Racing in the winter of 1980/81; MP4 originally stood for “Marlboro Project 4”, named after the team’s long-standing title sponsor. The papaya-coloured livery, today the team’s trademark, dates back to Bruce McLaren’s early years and became the team’s defining look again from 2017, after decades of red, silver and chrome.

McLaren’s most successful era came between 1984 and 1991, when the team under Ron Dennis won seven drivers’ titles in eight years with Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. The high point was the 1988 season, when Senna and Prost won 15 of 16 races with the MP4/4, one of the most dominant campaigns in Formula 1 history. With Mika Häkkinen, two further drivers’ titles followed in 1998 and 1999, alongside the team’s eighth constructors’ title.

After 2008, when Lewis Hamilton claimed the last drivers’ title before the team’s most recent era, a 26-year drought without a constructors’ title followed, compounded by an unsuccessful engine partnership with Honda from 2015. Only the switch to Mercedes power units in 2021 and the gradual technical rebuild under team principal Andrea Stella turned things around.

In 2024, McLaren became constructors’ champion for the first time since 1998 and defended the title in 2025 with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, clinching it early in Singapore for the team’s tenth title overall. With one of the strongest driver line-ups on the grid, the team from Woking enters the 2026 season as one of the favourites once again.