McLaren

McLaren was founded by New Zealander Bruce McLaren in 1963 and entered Formula 1 in 1966. After Bruce's death in a 1970 testing accident, the team he built grew into one of the sport's true giants, second only to Ferrari in wins and championships. Based in Woking, England, McLaren has defined multiple eras of Grand Prix racing across more than five decades.

The team's golden ages are woven through the history of the sport: Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt brought titles in the 1970s, but it was the partnership with engine maker Honda in the late 1980s that produced perhaps the most dominant car-and-driver combination ever, as Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost waged their legendary rivalry and the MP4/4 won 15 of 16 races in 1988. Mika Häkkinen added back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999, and Lewis Hamilton won his maiden championship in McLaren colours in 2008.

After a lean spell in the 2010s, McLaren rebuilt under new leadership and returned to the front, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri carrying the papaya cars back into title contention and re-establishing the team as a benchmark of the modern grid.

McLaren embodies relentless engineering ambition and a winning culture forged by Bruce McLaren and sharpened by Ron Dennis. The papaya orange livery, the obsessive attention to detail and a roll-call of the sport's greatest drivers have made McLaren a byword for excellence. Its ability to fall and rise again is part of what keeps it among Formula 1's most respected institutions.