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McLaren

By Jason Barlow

11 Months Ago

Formula One teams, like rock bands and actors, enjoy what is often referred to as an ‘imperial’ phase. This is one of those periods in time when everything simply seems to go right. The wins lead to championships, the hit songs keep flowing, the roles get juicier, and all involved can apparently do no wrong. For McLaren, 1988 was one of those eras, a period that saw a formidable group of individuals operating at the peak of their abilities. Ron Dennis had taken control of the team in 1981 and, newly emboldened, McLaren would subsequently pioneer the use of carbon fibre in the construction of an F1 car’s chassis. This stands as one of the great game-changers in the history of motorsport – carbon fibre isn’t just lighter than steel or aluminium, it’s also much stronger – and it’s a perfect example of McLaren’s questing mindset. Such was the team’s upward trajectory at this point that double world champion Niki Lauda had come out of retirement to drive for them; he would win his third and final F1 world championship in 1984 by just half a point.

By ’88, however, the stars had truly aligned. Dennis had hired the astonishing Ayrton Senna to drive alongside the professorial Frenchman, Alain Prost (the former was supernaturally fast, the latter “wanted to win… as slowly as possible.”) Honda supplied the engines and was the master of the turbocharging technology that had revolutionised F1. Then there was the team’s technical director, the prodigiously talented Gordon Murray, a laconic South African whose collection of band T-shirts and shoulder-length hair was in stark contrast to the brilliant but uptight Dennis. Between them, they won 15 of that year’s 16 Grands Prix, establishing a record that was only broken in 2023 by Red Bull. The thought of Senna and Prost together under the same racing roof seems more incredible with each passing year; this is widely thought to be the greatest driver pairing in motorsport history. Meanwhile, the 1988 racing car, the MP4-4, remains an unsurpassable piece of design and engineering, as beautiful as it was fast.

Something else significant happened that year. Gordon Murray had been plotting a road car for years, and as he and McLaren’s directors sat at Milan’s Linate airport following the Italian GP – ironically the only race that year they didn’t win – the conversation turned to that subject. The project was soon approved, Murray drawing up a typically rigorous manifesto. This would be his baby, the antithesis of a committee car. “No compromise, three seat layout, use F1 technology to create ground effect, composite monocoque and body, F1 engine, 200mph-plus top speed…” Murray also noted that the marketing would be “all about mystique… the product should sell itself.” He and the car were, as ever, far ahead of their time. The result wouldn’t appear until 1992 and was known simply as the McLaren F1. Just as the company’s racing cars had proven transformative, so the F1 would establish a new template for ultra-high performance road cars. Few got to drive it but those who did were awestruck. “Working with such a compact and varied group of exceptionally creative engineers always proves stimulating,” Dennis reflected years later. “Yet the F1 project also proved intensely frustrating on occasions and extremely expensive.”

It was also expensive to purchase, at £540,000 (about £1.1m now), and with just 106 manufactured – 64 road cars, 42 racing iterations – nor was it commercially successful. Yet in the decades since, its status has grown to the extent that it is now acknowledged as one of the all time greats. Indeed, Elon Musk bought one when he banked his first fortune in 1999. A case, perhaps, of one singularly focused individual recognising the work of another. Note that a McLaren F1 is currently worth anything up to £20m, as desired and revered as the most sough after contemporary art.

“If Bruce had walked into the workshop one morning and told us we were all going to march across the Sahara Desert,” driver and former McLaren employee Howden Ganley recalled, “we’d have immediately downed tools and followed him.” The name, of course, lived on. There were wins in the celebrated Indianapolis 500 race in 1972 and 1974, and under new owner, American entrepreneur Teddy Mayer, the F1 team soared to new heights.

There were world championships in 1974 and 1976 with Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt leading the charge. (The latter’s valiant campaign against Ferrari’s star driver, Niki Lauda, was the subject of another film, 2012’s Rush). This was also the era in which McLaren began a sponsorship arrangement with Marlboro, the distinctive red and white livery dominating the F1 grid for decades to come. One of the fascinations of Formula One is whether, or how often, the imperial phases can be repeated. The Senna/Prost era truly did capture lightning in a bottle, and perhaps creating the F1 road car had been a distraction. However, following a relatively fallow Nineties, McLaren was resurgent by the decade’s end. Team Principal Ron Dennis had built the team around Finnish driver Mika Hakkinen, who had survived a huge crash and life-saving track-side tracheotomy during the 1995 Australian GP.

He went on to win back-to-back driver’s championships in 1998 and 1999. The other key figure was technical director Adrian Newey, perhaps the most influential designer in F1 history, who deepened his reputation for innovation during his years with the Woking-based team. (Interestingly, it was Newey who designed the Red Bull RB19 that broke McLaren’s 1988 record for the most consecutive wins – what goes around comes around…).

Both are future world champions. McLaren has also diversified. Its Applied Technology division takes F1 innovation into other spheres, including data gathering, transport and bio-medicine. And an underground walkway connects the MTC main building to another high-profile part of the business, McLaren Automotive. Having collaborated with Mercedes on the spectacular SLR supercar in the early Noughties, a standalone automotive division was created in 2010, building on the intense innovation demonstrated by the original McLaren F1 road car.

Sure, it has taken time to establish a clear identity, but there’s an intellectual rigour here that contrasts with the more extrovert cars created by Ferrari. The 750S has just been launched, a machine that exemplifies McLaren’s commitment to technology, innovation and above all, driver focus. And the hybridised Artura points to a future in which electrification will allow the company to preserve performance while reducing emissions. There’s no doubt that more imperial phases await. The question is, how many?