All History of McLaren

Bruce McLaren was born in New Zealand’s Auckland in 1937. Bruce started building his first race car when he was 13. He was interested in cars and liked going fast. Because his parents ran a gas store, he had access to everything he needed to make a race car. Bruce turned an old Austin 7 Ulster into a racing car. This car helped him win his first race, in New Zealand. He had just turned 14.

The brand’s background goes back to 1963, when racing driver Bruce McLaren, born in New Zealand, started his team to build cars for Formula One, American IndyCar racing, and the Can-Am sportscar series. At first, the team was most successful in the Can-Am series.

Bruce McLaren was killed in 1970 while testing one of his Can-Am cars at Goodwood. His number two, American Teddy Mayer, took over as team director. McLaren Engines was founded in 1969 by Bruce McLaren, a New Zealander who is a racing icon. He did this by setting up a base in North America to back his efforts in the Can-Am and Indy racing series. In the nine years that the Can-Am series ran, McLaren won five.

Johnny Rutherford drove for Team McLaren and won the Indy 500 in both 1974 and 1976. By the end of that decade, McLaren’s racing activities were once again focused on F1 in Europe. Today, the two parts of McLaren only exist in the same name. As it is known today, McLaren Engineering has stayed in the Detroit area, where it is a leading powertrain engineering and development service for the North American car industry.

But it was when Ron Dennis took over in 1981 the team had its most success. In 1981, Ron Dennis’ Project 4 Racing team joined McLaren’s team. McLaren was the first company to make a whole race car from carbon fiber. John Barnard, a car builder who also made the first semi-automatic gearbox, helped get this done.

The union also started McLaren’s most successful time in Formula One. Dennis took full charge of the team. McLaren won seven driver and six team championships with drivers like Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, and Ayrton Senna and engines from Porsche and Honda. In 1988, Prost and Senna won all but one race together, but Prost later left McLaren for Ferrari because he and Senna were so angry with each other.

The very first “street” McLaren came out in 1992. This car was the fastest production car on the market. It was called “F1” to show that its roots were in racing. Unofficially, the car was going 241 miles per hour. The F1 was powered by a BMW engine and had room for three people.

The F1 was made by hand from start to finish and cost more than $1 million. In the first five years that these cars were made, only 100 were made. There were different versions of the F1, and some of the more unique ones were only made in small numbers, like three cars. McLaren’s next vehicle was ready to come out in 1999.

In the 2000s, McLaren was still one of the best Formula One teams. In 2007, there might have been more, but the team was caught up in a crisis because they were accused of spying on their rivals, Ferrari. The team was fined a record $100 million and kicked out of the manufacturers’ championship. At the last race, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso both lost the drivers’ championship by one point. The team returned, and in 2008, Hamilton won the title for best driver.

In 2010, the race team and the part of the company that made cars went their separate ways. McLaren Racing was split off from McLaren Automotive. The 12C came out in the middle of 2011, and it was the first car McLaren developed and built from start to finish since the F1. In 2012, a Spider model came out.

After the 12C was a success, McLaren released the F1’s direct successor, the F1. The McLaren P1 was one of the fastest and most powerful road cars because it used Formula One technology and hybrid power.

After McLaren said they were going to release a new car every year, more production cars were shown off in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, the 650S Coupe and Spider came out; in 2015, the 570S and 540C from the sports line did.

In 2015, McLaren also released the P1 GTR, which is a track version of the P1. This was shown for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show. Only people who already owned a P1 were allowed to buy one.

Flewitt showed off a very ambitious business plan for the company at the Geneva auto show in March 2016. The “Track 22” plan calls for the company to release 15 new cars over the next six years.