Written by Augusto Leroux Fernandez, Edited by Meghana Sree
McLaren is one of the most successful and popular teams in Formula One. They have been at the top more times than any other team, except for Ferrari. They have had legends such as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton driving their cars.
But they have had to wait more than anyone to win once more. Let’s dive into their journey back to the winning the title after a 26-year wait.
26 years. 26 years is now the greatest gap between two World Constructors’ Championships. That record now belongs to McLaren.
When Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard won the title for the English team at the 1998 Japanese Grand Prix, spirits were high at Woking for what seemed a bright new age.
Little did they know, they wouldn’t see the trophy for a long time, and only after an arduous journey — one with highs, lows, scandals and more. But what exactly happened?
1999 - 2006: Ferrari’s reign and reliability problems
The year after the triumph in Suzuka would still be considered a good one. Häkkinen won his second Drivers’ Championship by just two points, after a season-long battle with Ferrari’s Eddie Irvine that came down to the last race.
Still, David Coulthard finished P4, a mere four points over Michael Schumacher, who missed six races after breaking his leg in Silverstone. That way, the Prancing Horse won the title for the first time in 16 years, a record at the time.
But problems had just started. While the 1999 season saw the men in red take the win by four points, the dawn of the new millennium was a nightmare, not only for McLaren, but for any team with hopes for the championship.
Those were the years when Schumacher swept the field, winning five titles himself, alongside five titles for the Scuderia with the help of his teammate Rubens Barrichello.
But apart from the driving and engineering masterclass the Italians delivered (the Ferraris F2002 and F2004 are considered two of the most dominant cars in the sport’s history), McLaren suffered from poor reliability too many times.
Out of 176 possible finishes between 2002 and 2006, one of their own failed to cross the line 53 times, which is equivalent to 30 percent.
Drivers of the highest calibre, such as Kimi Räikkönen, David Coulthard and Juan Pablo Montoya, failed to bring the Constructors' title back to Woking.
2007: The scandal
Heading into 2007, things finally looked like going McLaren’s way. With a fresh new lineup, the team’s hopes were really high, expecting great things for the season.
Two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso had been confirmed the year prior, while rookie Lewis Hamilton, the Formula 3 and GP2 champion, would be his teammate.
With four wins each and a joint tally of 24 podiums divided evenly between both of them, the McLarens dominated the field.
Hamilton got nine consecutive podiums after finishing P3 on his first ever race, but on the last eight only managed three. Alonso didn’t fall short either, and got the same amount of points as him.
He would later recall that the tension in the team was at the highest, and that team principal Ron Dennis favoured his pupil (Hamilton) over him.
Marc Priestley, who was an engineer that season, recalled in an interview with Marca: “The radio exchanges in which I took part really showed we had a greater problem than what we thought at first, the drivers were shouting at each other through the team”.
On the other hand, the driver born in Asturias, Spain, has also said (in dialogue with AS): “With Hamilton nothing happened, [the problem] was with the team, with whom I had some differences.”
But McLaren's greatest problem wasn’t the relationship between their drivers, who each had 109 points by the end of the season, finishing only one point behind Ferrari’s Räikkönen.
Those 218 points would have won the Constructors’ Championship for the team, but earlier that year, one of F1 biggest scandals had grabbed all the headlines. The Spygate.
Thousands of articles and discussions already cover the incident, but long story short, one of Ferrari’s top men, chief mechanic Nigel Stepney, had grown discontent with his situation at the Scuderia.
As both historic teams entered the 2007 season with the goal of beating two-time Constructors’ Champions Renault, Stepney contacted his friend Mike Coughlan, who was chief designer at McLaren.
He then sent Coughlan confidential information on the F2007, including a 780-page file containing data on the car, which allowed the Woking team to essentially recreate the Scuderia's car.
The plot was discovered in quite the bizarre way, as Coughlan’s wife sent that same file to a copy shop and the owner, an avid Ferrari fan himself, recognized Ferrari’s logo on it. After contacting the team and showing what he discovered, the scandal went public.
After months of investigations, negotiations and a trial that even involved the Italian justice, Mike Coughlan was fined and fired from McLaren.
The team was fined $100 million and disqualified from the Constructors’ Championship, the sport’s harshest penalty to date.
Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were allowed to keep on racing as they collaborated with the investigation, though it had been confirmed that the Spaniard, along with reserve driver Pedro de la Rosa, were aware of the situation.
2008 - 2013: Lewis Hamilton wins the title and runners up once more
With their reputation tarnished and an opportunity lost, the team had to move on. Alonso left the team, being replaced by Finnish driver Heikki Kovalainen.
The great star would be Hamilton, who had already proved to be F1's most promising youngster. The British who had lost the title on the last race the prior year, would go on to win the championship in the same way.
He overtook Timo Glock on the last corner of the season finale at Brazil, finishing 5th and clinching the title from Felipe Massa, who had won the race and was already celebrating with Ferrari. Despite this, the Constructors' title escaped once more, as Kovalainen only finished in 7th place in the standings.
The team's struggle for the title continued over the following years. Legendary team principal Ron Dennis left in 2009, as the drought reached the ten years mark.
Hamilton achieved wins in every season, but for one reason or another the long awaited triumph continued to slip away.
In 2010, Jenson Button (who had won both championships the year prior with newcomers Brawn GP) joined the team. However that year marked the start of Red Bull’s four season run.
Although they failed in their final goal, McLaren were still contenders, attaining three second places and two third places until 2013.
2013 - 2022: Rock bottom and light at the end of the tunnel
When Hamilton left the team for the 2013 season, alarms went off at Woking. They quickly replaced him with a young Sergio Pérez, who promised a lot, but who, along with Button, failed to obtain a podium all season.
Little did anyone know that this season would only mark the start of some of the darkest years in the team’s history.
They went through many changes that never worked over almost ten years: Alonso and Dennis’ comebacks, new partnerships with Honda and Renault as engine manufacturers and constant new driver signings (Kevin Magnussen, Pérez, Stoffel Vandoorne, Alonso, etc.).
Still, they failed to be the best of the rest in every season except 2020. They even spent five seasons (from 2014 to 2019) with no podiums, finishing second to last in 2015 and 2017.
But all nights must come to an end, and light started to appear at the end of the tunnel for the team. In 2019 they confirmed Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz as their new drivers and they didn’t disappoint.
Over the course of the two seasons he stayed at Woking, the Spaniard obtained two podiums, finishing sixth in the driver standings both times.
New team principal Andreas Seidl also had his part in this slow rebuild, alongside Zak Brown, who replaced Dennis as CEO in 2016.
McLaren had started showing signs of competitiveness once again. Apart from those two podiums by Sainz, Norris reached the top three on six occasions from 2020 to 2022, while Daniel Ricciardo, who drove for the team after Sainz left for Ferrari, managed to win at Monza in 2021.'
2023 - 2024: McLaren's Rebirth and journey to win the title
It took a long time. 9534 days. 519 races. But now, 26 years later, McLaren are World Champions. Oscar Piastri and Norris form the lineup that finally did it.
Andrea Stella is the Team Principal who, along with Brown, guided them. All the engineers and team members that gave their best to take the Woking outfit back to the top of motorsport once again will certainly have something to be proud of for years to come.
The real talk started in the second part of 2023. After only taking home 17 points in the first eight races, the Papaya team reacted. They ended the season, 14 races and seven podiums later, with 302 points to their name.
And, by the end of the 2024, they had 21 podiums, six wins and 666 points. Both their drivers not only won at least two times, but for the first time ever both officially finished all races.
It was a reward for their consistency in one of F1 greatest seasons of all time, the first since 2009 with a Constructors’ Champion that’s not Red Bull or Mercedes.
Now, the questions arise: Will they be able to maintain this form in years to come? Have they learnt from their errors in these 26 years? Only time will tell. What is sure is that they will never stop trying.
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