McLaren

McLaren

Monday 20th February 2006

With Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel of a McLaren F1 car in 2008, the Woking team will be one of the favourites to win the Drivers' title. Then again, that all depends on whether the team and the Brit can recover from the mistakes that cost them dearly last season.

McLaren began life in the mid-1960s competing in their first race in 1966 and securing their first win at Spa in 1968 with founder, Bruce McLaren, at the wheel.

Tragically he was to die in a testing accident in 1970, though his racing team went on to make steady progress.

Denny Hulme helped the team to five wins and Peter Revson to two between 1968 and 1973, which laid the foundations for success the following year as McLaren secured their first drivers' and constructors' championships.

The young Brazilian driver Emerson Fittipaldi edged out Clay Regazzoni for the drivers' title by three points, with three wins in the season and, while with team-mate Hulme grabbing another the constructors' was won too.

There was more success for McLaren in 1976 when James Hunt won the drivers' championship in teeming rain at the final race at Mount Fiji, beating Ferrari's Niki Lauda by a single point.

Ferrari, however, would hold onto the constructors' title that year.

The team then suffered a lapse in form with no GP wins between October 1977 and July 1981 when John Watson finally ended the drought at Silverstone.

Under new administration (enter Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh), the renamed McLaren International team went on to dominate much of the 1980s and early 1990s.

After ending their long association with Ford, which dated back to 1970, McLaren were now powered by the TAG-Porsche engine and they went on to win the 1984 and 1985 constructors' championship with drivers Niki Lauda and Alain Prost winning the drivers' championship in the respective years.

Although they lost constructors' honours to Williams in 1986 and 1987, Alain Prost still took the drivers' championship in 1986.

However, the best was still to come for McLaren.

1988 was the zenith of their power, as the team, now with the Honda engine, won all but one of the races that season and stormed to the championship.

Only the Italian GP at Monza eluded them after drivers' champion-elect Ayrton Senna crashed with just two laps to go.

The team went on to record another three consecutive constructors' championships to make it four in a row between 1988 and 1991 with Senna and Prost securing the respective drivers' titles.

This is the best ever run for one team in F1 history. However, their dominance was brought to an end by Williams as they won both the 1992 constructors' and drivers' championships with Nigel Mansell the star.

Soon McLaren were struggling to find any form and after Senna's win at Adelaide in 1993, the team did not record a GP win for three consecutive seasons.

After a series of uncompetitive Peugeot and Ford engines, in 1995 McLaren signed a deal with Mercedes and it proved the beginning of a revival.

Yet they would have to wait until the start of the 1997 season for David Coulthard to end the drought at Melbourne.

In 1998 all the pieces fell into place for McLaren as they secured the constructors' championship with nine wins and the drivers' championship for Mika Hakkinen.

Whilst in 1999, despite some rare moments of madness from the flying Finn, McLaren won the drivers' championship yet again, though arch rivals Ferrari took the constructors' honours.

With Daimler-Chrysler having purchased 40 percent of the company, McLaren were odds-on favourites to take their third successive drivers' title in 2000, as well as reclaiming the constructors' championship lost to Ferrari in 1999.

However from the outset of the 2000 season it was clear that Ferrari meant business. Poor reliability and indifferent performances from Hakkinen left McLaren trailing the Italian team by almost 30 points after just three rounds but as the season progressed, the Woking team fought back with Hakkinen and Coulthard grabbing a string of mid-season victories.

The strength of the Ferrari effort together with a pair of questionable decisions by the sport's governing body meant McLaren could only manage the runners-up spot in both championships.

In 2001, McLaren retained Hakkinen and Coulthard for a record sixth successive season, but once again they failed to set the track ablaze.

The relative failure of 2000 continued in 2001, with the team only managing four victories - two for DC and two for Hakkinen, who announced during the season that he would not be returning to the team in 2002 (his sabbatical subsequently turned into retirement).

The gloom deepened in 2002 - the Mercedes engine was down on power and the lack of engine development was put down to the tragic death of Ilmor founder Paul Morgan in a 2001 plane crash.

Coulthard won in Monaco courtesy of some nifty pits-to-car telemetry and Raikkonen was very unlucky not to get a maiden win in France, spinning on oil with just two laps to go.

But the significant moves of the year were technical.

The team signed up BMW's Werner Laurenz, Arrows' Mike Coughlan and Ferrari's John Sutton to create a formidable technical team for the 2003 season, a campaign they planned to start with the MP4-17D before swapping to the MP4-18 when the European leg began. However the MP4-18, hit by a series of technical failures, never made its debut, and Raikkonen and Coulthard were forced to contend the entire season with the previous year's car. The setback was critical - the impressive Finn finished just two points behind Michael Schumacher.

Hopes were high that the introduction of the MP4-19 would enable Kimi to take the fight to Michael in 2004, but it quickly emerged that it was one of the worst cars in the team's history.

Indeed, the start to the season, in which they struggled to score a handful of points in the wretched MP4-19, was statistically their worst since the 1970s.

The introduction of MP4-19B was a blessed relief and propelled Kimi to a fabulous win at Spa, but it was too little, too late.

In 2005, Coulthard was replaced by the volatile and hard-charging Juan-Pablo Montoya, giving McLaren arguably their most exciting driver line-up since the days of Senna and Prost.

Or so we thought.

Injured in a "tennis accident" (as the world was told) Montoya missed the Bahrain and San Marino GPs and, although he returned to take victory at Silverstone, he struggled to find his feet.

Raikkonen, meanwhile, was dogged by reliability issues.

Although McLaren's MP4-20 was the quickest car on the grid its Mercedes engine was one of the most unreliable, failing Kimi four times during grands prix weekends.

He had to settle for runner-up to Fernando Alonso in the drivers' championship, while McLaren had to contend with P2 in the teams' battle.

In 2006 McLaren had a lot to play for. Not only did they need to demonstrate to Alonso that the team he was joining the following year was capable of winning titles, but they also needed to find a way to retain Kimi Raikkonen. They failed to do either.

In fact, they failed to even win a single grand prix the entire 18-race long season.

McLaren's first race, the Bahrain GP, saw both signs of promise and concern for the Woking team. The concern came from the suspension failure Raikkonen suffered in qualifying, while the promise was shown during the race, which the Finn and team-mate Montoya finished in 3rd and 5th places respectively.

Qualifying continued to be a problem for the team as Raikkonen's P4 on the grid was the best the team managed to achieve in the opening six events as pace let them down time and time again.

McLaren battled on, claiming at least one podium finish over the next three races, but they never looked like winning races. The low point of the team's season came at the United States GP when a first lap incident between Montoya and Raikkonen resulted in a double retirement and a lot of heated debate over who was in the wrong.

Shortly afterwards came the shock announcement that Montoya was quitting the team to switch to NASCAR in 2007. An angry McLaren management team responded by immediately dropping the Colombian, replacing him with Pedro de la Rosa for the French GP. The Spaniard performed admirably, claiming a points-scoring finish in his first race.

With Raikkonen bound for Ferrari and De la Rosa not considered for a full-time promotion, the team began 2007 with double World Champion Fernando Alonso and the highly-rated Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel.

But while the partnership looked great on paper, it proved to be a volatile mix.

The duo fought both on and off the track with the tension already showing between the double World Champion and the rookie at the Monaco GP when Hamilton hinted that McLaren wouldn't allow him to challenge Alonso for the win. One race later, though, and it was Hamilton who was winning, clinching his first grand prix victory in Canada. But when he followed it up with a win at the United States GP, it was Alonso who was shaking his fist and complaining.

A month later and any sense of civility between the two Woking drivers had broken down. During qualifying for the Hungarian GP, Hamilton disobeyed team orders to let Alonso pass him at the start of Qualy 3, while 15 minutes later Alonso deliberately stayed in the pitbox long enough to prevent Hamilton from getting new tyres and getting out in enough time to challenge for the pole position. However, Alonso was the only driver the FIA punished when they demoted him from pole to sixth place on the grid. Hamilton was handed his team-mate's pole. McLaren were also punished by being banned from scoring Constructors' Championship points.

From there it was all-out war between the two Championship contenders who yapped at one another in the press all the way to the end of the season, which saw both drivers fail to win the World title, finishing one point behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

But aside from their driver feud McLaren had bigger problems to worry about as the Woking team was caught in unauthorised possession of Ferrari's secret technical information. And although Ron Dennis protested his team's innocence throughout the Stepneygate spy scandal, the FIA eventually deemed the Woking team to be in the wrong and kicked them out of the Constructors' Championship as well as handing them a record �50million fine.

McLaren's reputation also suffered a severe dent which the team now has to set about rebuilding. And there's probably no one better to help them do that than Hamilton, who will be staying at Woking until 2012.

The British ace is widely regarded as F1's saviour following Michael Schumacher's departure and this year's Championship could see him become the man to hand McLaren there first World title since Mika Hakkinen in 1991. And with likeable new team-mate Heikki Kovalainen not prone to trouble-making, expect McLaren's internal feuds to become a thing of the past.

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