McLaren's greatest cars: from Can-Am to Formula 1

Racing History

Whether it was grand prix stunners, sports car stars or even shock Le Mans winners, McLaren has an illustrious history of churning out interesting, innovative and sometimes just plain gorgeous racing cars. Robert Ladbrook takes a look at some of its best.

McLaren Senna S’s
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While McLaren will be hoping that its new MCL60 Formula 1 challenger – named in difference to the company’s 60th year – can springboard it back to the front of the grand prix grid, the brand’s anniversary gives us a chance to study its impressive back catalogue.

McLaren is now virtually unrecognisable from the small team Bruce McLaren founded way back in 1963, and since then has gone on to produce so many circuit racing stars. Here we take a look at some of the most groundbreaking, historically important, and just downright cool competition machines it has ever produced.

1964 Cooper-Oldsmobile ‘Zerex Special’ 

Bruce McLaren at the wheel of the Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile

OK, so it’s not technically a McLaren from birth, but it certainly became one. And, had it not been for this diminutive, grand prix car-turned sports racer, we may never have had a ‘McLaren’ in the first place. 

What started life as a Cooper T53 was bought as a wreck by Roger Penske and transformed first into a single-seater sports car with a 2.5-litre Coventry Climax engine, and then into a twin-seater (sort of, if your passenger was three feet three…) as a way of squeezing through some increasingly tightening regulation loopholes.  

Raced very successfully by Penske, the car was sold to Bruce McLaren for 1964 and he set about seriously modifying it, cutting the car to pieces to fit a tubular chassis and accommodate a monstrous 3.5-litre Traco-Oldsmobile V8. This car can lay claim to being the first true McLaren sports car, even if it was only modified by Bruce. It did however set him on the path to building his own grand prix cars.  

1967 M6A, Can-Am 

The aforementioned Zerex Special had the knock-on effect of also inspiring McLaren to build the seminal M1 Can-Am design, but things were taken notably further with McLaren’s second attempt at the fire-breathing American Group 7 category with the launch of the M6 in 1967. 

With a design team of McLaren, Robin Herd, Gordon Coppuck, Tyler Alexander and Don Beresford behind it, the wedge-shaped M6A featured the first monocoque designed by McLaren and its Chevrolet engine had McLaren’s first in-house fuel injection system fitted. 

The results were unlike anything Can-Am had seen before. McLaren shattered the lap record on the car’s debut at Road America to secure pole, but an oil leak left the way clear for Denny Hulme to win in the sister car. Hulme went on to win each of the first three races – the second and third ahead of Bruce in a M6A one-two – before Bruce took the next two wins. Five wins from six rounds and the drivers’ title for Bruce and Denny second. Not half bad… 

1968 M7A, Formula 1 

When it comes to revolutionary McLarens, this isn’t really one of them. But what it is, is a special piece of Formula 1 history that has yet to be equalled, and likely never will be.  

The Robin Herd and Gordon Coppuck-designed M7A of 1968 was the first McLaren grand prix car to be powered by the Cosworth DFV, but then so was a good majority of the field as Ford’s finest began to eclipse the offerings from Coventry Climax, Honda and Repco. Aside from a brief experiment with side-mounted ‘pannier’ fuel tanks (inspired by sports car racing designs) and the addition of Lockheed vintillated disc brakes when the majority of the British teams ran Girling, the M7A was pretty run-of-the-mill, as you’d expect for a team in its infancy, Bruce McLaren having founded it in 1963. 

But the M7A entered the record books when McLaren won the Belgian Grand Prix that year, becoming one of just two drivers ever to win a grand prix in a car bearing his own name (the other being Jack Brabham). No other driver has equalled that feat since, although Emerson Fittipaldi came close with a second place in his Fittipaldi F5A in Brazil in 1978. 

Don’t expect another to come along soon either, unless Lance Stroll wins in a Stroll… 

1973 M23, Formula 1 

The key strength of the M23 wasn’t its victory tally (although the 16 it did take was still mightily impressive) or any form of ground-breaking innovation, instead it was the sheer longevity of a design that was still winning races a full four years after its launch. 

Designed by Gordon Coppuck, the M23 was a simple yet effective design that was constantly evolved. 

There was some innovation, such as it being the first F1 car to feature a six-speed gearbox, and it also spouted under-floor skirts as well as a pneumatic air-starter system to save weight during its later life. 

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A first grand prix win came courtesy of Denny Hulme at Anderstorp in 1973 in only its fifth race. Its last came at the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, as James Hunt put the cherry on top of his world championship year. 

In fact, the M23 nearly won in 1977 too, with both Hunt and Jochen Mass taking second-place finishes in Brazil and Sweden respectively – not bad for a car half-a-decade old by then. It was eventually superseded by the M26 later that year, but privateers continued to run M23s into 1978. 

1984 MP4/2, Formula 1 

Just a few seasons earlier and McLaren was undergoing a bit of a revolution. The team had been struggling during the late 1970s and was at risk of being sucked back to the tail-end of the grid. Then Ron Dennis and his Project Four Racing team arrived in 1980 and McLaren’s entire direction changed. Investment in new technology became rife, as evidenced by John Barnard’s ground-breaking carbon fibre monocoque for the MP4/1 of 1981, and all of the lessons learned from that design were ratcheted up a notch when the second-generation MP4/2 arrived for 1984. 

Dennis had used his persuasive powers to lure Porsche back into the sport and its TAG-badged 1.5-litre V6 turbo proved to be the class of the field as the MP4/2 whitewashed its competition in its first year. 

Niki Lauda and Alain Prost shared 12 victories from 16 that year (Lauda’s five to Prost’s seven) as the Austrian secured his third world title. Prost then struck back in 1985, taking five wins and his first world title, before doubling up in 1986, but the increasing pace of the Williams-Honda signalled that changes needed to be made and the MP4/3 replaced it in 1987, right in time for Williams to run riot… 

1988 MP4/4, Formula 1 

An achingly obvious choice, not merely because it was one of the most dominant F1 cars ever created, but also because it played host to one of the most fascinating power struggles in the sport’s history as Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna went head-to-head in their own private fight on and off the track. 

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The introduction of the smaller and significantly more punchy Honda V6 turbo allowed McLaren to ditch its V-shaped monocoque design and create something sleeker and lower-slung, with the car’s centre of gravity significantly lowered.  

The petite and pretty MP4/4 didn’t just look the part either, Prost and Senna shared 15 of the 16 available grand prix wins that year as their opposition faltered, with Senna nicking his first world title by just three points from the Frenchman. Poor Gerhard Berger in third had less than half the points of Prost, such was McLaren’s dominance. 


1995 F1 GTR, GT1 

The Le Mans-winning F1 GTR

McLaren shocked the world when it pulled the covers off its road-going F1 in 1992, which designer Gordon Murray believed to be the ultimate expression of a performance road car, with its three-seater, central driving position and sledgehammer of a BMW V12 mounted in the back.  

Despite the car’s obvious potential – carbon chassis, perfect weight distribution, double wishbone suspension, that V12… – Murray insisted there were no plans to take it racing. Yet two years later the BPR Global GT Series was launched, catering for modified racing versions of road-going supercars. That was when Le Mans winner John Nielsen began badgering Murray to create a racing version of the F1, by 195, he’d given in, and a total of nine chassis were prepared for racing. Due to the original F1’s design, it didn’t take much more than a stripped interior, additional cooling ducts and some carbon brakes to actually create the GTR, which went on to dominate BPR races from the outset. 

And then came Le Mans, with seven GTRs entered into the GT1 class. The 1995 edition will go down as one of the wettest in history, with torrential rain hammering the circuit for 17 hours straight. As one by one the faster prototype runners fell by the wayside, the McLarens continued at unabated speed, so much so that they filled four of the top five positions at the finish, with the Kokusai Kaihatsu Racing car of Yannick Dalmas, Masanori Sekiya and JJ Lehto claiming the win – and also the race’s fastest speed down the Mulsanne, some 174.6mph. McLaren had not only won Le Mans at its first attempt, it had dominated it, with a lightly modified road car. Exceptional.  

1998 MP4/13, Formula 1 

There are few F1 designers capable of spotting a loophole quite like Adrian Newey, and the rules reset between 1997 and 1998 gave him the perfect blank canvass to create something special. Having joined from Williams in 1997, Newey set to work on creating the MP4-13 for 1998, a car that by regulation would have to be narrower than its predecessors and run on grooved tyres rather than slicks. 

Newey devised a slippery design, mated it to a monster of a Mercedes engine and also devised a fiendishly clever brake-steer system where the driver could use any of the car’s brakes independently to maximise the car’s cornering ability. First trialled in 197, the system came to the fore on the MP4/13. 

Mika Hakkinen showed the package’s potential by lapping the entire field at the season-opening Australian GP. That, of course, brought scrutiny and a Ferrari protest at the car’s ability to brake-steer. Although the FIA eventually sided with Ferrari and McLaren was made to remove the braking system, the MP4/13 still scored 12 of the first 13 pole positions and Hakkinen grabbed eight wins across the season to secure the title ahead of Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher. 

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