THE HISTORY OF MCLAREN RACING
- therookiereporters
- Jun 23
- 3 min read
In this article, I will write about McLaren`s history and their legacy that all started with Bruce Leslie McLaren, a legacy that is still going strong today.
THE HISTORY OF MCLAREN RACING
Born for racing:
McLaren`s history is definitely one of restless technical development and is characterised by such gritty tales of heroism and real human endeavour. And it all started in 1963 when Bruce McLaren created the team and made it a part of his image. Bruce was a racing driver to his core and surrounded himself with people who fit a pretty strict criteria like dreamers, where racing was their whole life. Talent was also important, but determination, hard work and huge relentless lust for racing was probably the most important thing.
When the team was torn apart, just seven years later in 1970 when Bruce died. When this happened, the McLaren team went back to the factory, and they used their pain and grieving to inspire a heroic and a long-lasting rebuild in Bruce's name, which became the start for McLaren to become one of the best and successful teams in motorsports history.
Ever since then a lot of McLaren drivers have stood on the top step of the podium in the most amazing races in history, from the Can-Am Series, to the Indy 500, the 24hrs of Le Mans, the Formula One Championship and more recently Formula E and Sim racing, which both taking up their significant chapter of the McLaren Racing history book.
McLaren Formula One Heritage:
The roots of McLaren are spread across multiple racing series, but so many of their greatest stories and finest triumphs have come in Formula One. As they started off as just a group of scrappy young Kiwis in 1966, they have become one of the sport`s oldest and most successful teams, with a total of nine constructors' championships and twelve driver championships. During all this time, the team has risen and fallen, they have discovered new heroes, lost legends, won on the final lap, and they have also endured gut-wrenching late defeats, experiencing every emotion imaginable.
Their champions have all shared the same passion and desire to race and a relentless work ethic as their founder, Bruce. But every single driver has told their own unique, timeless tale..Emerson Fittipaldi with his passion for his native Brazil, James Hunt did create a lot of headlines on the front pages as on the back, Nikki Lauda and Alain Prost turned the sport into science and let's not forget Ayrton Senna`s burning intensity which took the team to new levels, before Mika Häkkinen and Lewis Hamilton did pick up the baton and won hearts with their fearless aggression.
With every passing race, McLaren creates new history. Because there are still so many stories left to tell.
History is still being made
Today Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are driving for the McLaren Formula One Team, still creating a lot of history and keeping the legacy going, they secured the constructor championship last year (2024) and have been strong for all the races so far this year, also the two to them are battling for the Driver World Championship right now, with a gap of 22 points, where Piastri is in front of Norris.
There's been a rise in double podiums so far and they are also going pretty strong in the constructor championship this year, so I am so excited to see how the rest of the season goes.
They are definitely a HUGE part of McLaren`s history and legacy, and it just keeps on being stronger and stronger, their performance off and on track is truly incredible and they are very good at securing the team some points, as well it also seems that they are getting along well off track, we saw a battle between them in Canada this year, which we all know ended with Norris crashing into Piastri because he was misjudging the gap, and stuff like that can happen in racing, so it will definitely be more battles between those two teammates but we don`t want more crashes between them, just pure racing.
Article written by Ingrid Amdahl
