What Is McLaren Racing?
McLaren Racing is a British Formula 1 team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey. Founded in 1963 by the New Zealand driver Bruce McLaren, it entered its first Grand Prix at Monaco in 1966 and has since won ten Constructors’ Championships and thirteen Drivers’ titles — a record beaten only by Ferrari.
Bruce McLaren took the team’s first win himself, at Spa in 1968, and was killed testing at Goodwood two years later. The team he left behind won its first championship in 1974 and went on to define two eras: the Marlboro years of Lauda, Prost and Senna, when the MP4/4 won fifteen of sixteen races in 1988, and the West years of Mika Häkkinen.
Then came the drought. After Häkkinen’s second title in 1999 and Lewis Hamilton’s in 2008, McLaren went 26 years without a Constructors’ Championship, a spell that included three difficult seasons with Honda power. The team won the constructors’ title again in 2024 and took both titles in 2025, Lando Norris ending McLaren’s 17-year wait for a drivers’ champion.
