About McLaren
McLaren, founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren (1937–1970), is a Formula 1 team based in Woking, Surrey, UK. McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor but has also competed in the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, Canadian-American Challenge Cup and 24 Hours of Le Mans races. The current team was formed by the merger of the Bruce McLaren Racing Team with the Project 4 team in 1981. The team is managed by Ron Dennis and is part of McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group. Engines are supplied by McLaren shareholder Mercedes Benz.
McLaren is one of the most successful teams in Formula One, having won 156 races, 11 Drivers' Championships and 8 Constructors' Championships.
Vodafone became their title sponsor in 2007.
Racing History
1960s
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, initially as a builder of sports cars. The Kiwi made the team’s Grand Prix debut at the 1966 Monaco race. However, Bruce’s race was rather short-lived due to a terminal oil leak on the car. The 1966 programme was hampered by a poor choice of engines—Bruce had selected a short-stroke version of the 4.2 litre Ford Indy engine, which generated a lot of noise but very little power and was big and bulky. Ironically, Jack Brabham had adopted a Repco-developed engine based on a similar Oldsmobile block to the one Bruce was using in his early sports cars and his team took the 1966 and 1967 world championships.
Bruce abandoned the Ford in favour of a woefully underpowered but at least reliable Serenissima V8 (a descendant of the old ATS V8) to score the team's first point. In 1967 he initially turned to a slightly enlarged M4 Formula Two car powered by a two-litre BRM V8 before building a similar but slightly larger car called the M5 for the BRM V12. This was quick but had reliability problems and Bruce soon decided that the team had to adopt the Cosworth DFV engine.
