McLaren's top 10 racers

What's your favourite McLaren? The dominant MP4/4 of 1988, the F1 GTR that helped revive GT racing in the mid-1990s, or perhaps something older?

As part of our McLaren at 50 celebration, we decided to pick out the British marque's 10 best cars.

Some took Formula 1 titles, others dominated sportscars, and there's even an Indianapolis 500 winner in the list. What they have in common is that all played their part in McLaren's story. And they won.

Let us know what you think at mail@autosport.com

McLaren-Cosworth M7

Wins: 4
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

The M7 was the car that put McLaren on the Formula 1 map — and gave the fledgling marque its first grand prix victories in just the third season after Bruce McLaren had left Cooper to build F1 machinery bearing his own name.

The turning point in McLaren's F1 history came for 1968 when the team was awarded a supply of Ford Cosworth DFVs, the engine that was in the process of altering the face of F1.

The fortunes of a team that had run an eclectic array of engines since its move into F1 at the start of the three-litre formula changed at a stroke. Robin Herd laid down a neat monocoque design around the fully-stressed DFV, then promptly left for Cosworth, leaving Gordon Coppuck and McLaren himself to finish drawing the car.

The original version would win three GPs that season - the boss taking a maiden triumph for McLaren at Spa and Denny Hulme following it up with back-to-back victories in Italy (Monza) and Canada (Mont-Tremblant) - to give McLaren second place in the constructors' points.

Did you know?
The M7 didn't win a points-paying grand prix until Bruce McLaren triumphed at the third time of asking in Belgium, but it had actually won its first two races.

Bruce gave the car a debut victory at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in March and then Denny Hulme triumphed at the Silverstone International Trophy ahead of his team boss. Only the following month would the car make its world championship debut at Jarama.

McLaren-Chevrolet M8

Can-Am wins: 33
Interserie wins: 6

It had been dubbed the 'The Bruce and Denny Show' even before McLaren ramped up its attack on the Canadian-American Challenge with the introduction of the M8 for 1968.

Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and the M6A had dominated Can-Am the previous year and they continued in the same vein on the arrival of the new car, and then took that domination to another level in 1969. Now armed with the B-spec version of Swiss Jo Marquart's Chevrolet-engined Can-Am design, the McLaren factory duo was never beaten over 11 races, and in eight of them they finished one-two!

The supporting cast that had popped in the odd victory in previous years was relegated to little more than walk-on roles.

More of the same looked on the cards for 1970 with perhaps the definitive, and certainly the most beautiful of all the M8s, the 'D'. The outlandish aerodynamics of '69 had been outlawed and a new low-slung rear wing provided the perfect end point to the rakish design.

The story would continue without team founder Bruce. He was killed testing an M8D at Goodwood less than two weeks before the opening Can-Am round in June 1970.

The show had to go on, and Dan Gurney and Hulme continued to rack up the wins, Hulme succeeding his late team boss as champion.

Did you know?
Factory-run M8s, distinguished by their papaya orange livery, won a total of 32 Can-Am races between 1968 and '71. That represents a win percentage of 86.5 per cent.

McLaren-Offenhauser M16

USAC wins: 18
Indy 500 wins: 3

Three times an Indy 500 winner, the McLaren M16 has been dubbed the first modern Indycar. And perhaps rightly so. It introduced F1 aerodynamic thinking into Indycar circles, Gordon Coppuck borrowing the wedge design of the Lotus 72 even before he had the confidence to adopt it for his F1 designs.

That line of thought impressed no less than Roger Penske, who was on a shopping trip to England to buy his Indy fleet from Lola for 1971. He changed tack, opted for the McLaren and kicked started a domination of the 500 by British-built machinery.

Peter Revson took pole in the Penske McLaren that year before Mark Donohue finished the job in '72, taking a first win for the M16. Two years later, Johnny Rutherford added victory number two in a works-run car and reprised his triumph in 1976.

"Gordon came up with a very futuristic design," recalls Rutherford. "It was a very well-balanced race car and a dream to drive. I always enjoyed driving it, and not just because I won a lot of races in it."

From the 1976 victory until the creation of the Indy Racing League for 1996, all but two 500 winners would be built in the UK. Lotus and Lola had lit the fires in the 1960s, but McLaren was the British revolutionary that tore down the barricades with the M16.

McLaren-Cosworth M23

Wins: 16
Poles: 14
Fastest laps: 10

Longevity, back in the less spendthrift days of the 1970s, was a badge of honour for a Formula 1 car, and McLaren's M23 matched the six-year career of that other classic, the Lotus 72, at least of sorts. And, like the Lotus, it took some replacing.

The M23's successor, the M26, was sent back to the drawing board after appearing once in the second half of 1976 and only superseded a car that was still capable of running at the front mid-season the following year.

The M23 won grands prix in each its first four seasons and should have won in its swansong year with the works in 1977. And a design that had appeared at the beginning of 1973 was still good enough to qualify for grands prix with privateers deep into 1978.

Did you know?
Gilles Villeneuve and Bruno Giacomelli made their respective grand prix debuts in the M23 chassis in which James Hunt anchored his successful world title campaign in 1976 and then started the following season.

Even the nosecone on the car, chassis #8/2, was ex-Hunt when Giacomelli made his maiden GP start.

"I was number 14 and underneath you can still see the number 1," says the Italian today. "That means it was James's nose from earlier in the season. I still have it in my garage."

McLaren-Cosworth MP4/1

Wins: 6
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 5

Designer John Barnard had an idea, team boss Ron Dennis had a vision and Marlboro had a problem as a new decade dawned in 1980. Their collision begat the McLaren MP4/1.

A car that was originally known simply as the MP4 - it became the MP4/1 retrospectively - takes its place in the history books as the first carbonfibre chassis F1 car thanks to Barnard's aerodynamic prowess. The use of carbon was a means to an end: to enable him to squeeze in the monocoque to maximise ground-effect venturi width.

Yet the original MP4 is more important than that. Would Marlboro have engineered a link-up between the aspirational Project 4 F2 squad and the ailing McLaren outfit had team boss Dennis been peddling an aluminium-tubbed design? Probably not. MP4 was the foundation stone of 'modern McLaren'.

"It was a significant step forward for McLaren, and not just because the chassis was made of carbonfibre," says John Watson, McLaren driver between 1979 and 1983.

"The concept of the car was based on a young and ambitious engineer's amazing understanding of aerodynamics and packaging that brought a level of design quality that hadn't been seen before."

McLaren-TAG/Porsche MP4/2

Wins: 22
Poles: 7
Fastest laps: 16

The record books show that the MP4/2 - in its original 1984 specification and its B and C iterations - is one of the all-time great F1 cars. No other F1 car has yielded a team three drivers' titles, and its CV also boasts a pair of constructors' championships.

The MP4/2 wasn't an all-new design - its tub was based on the original MP4. But the car and the new TAG-Porsche twin-turbo V6 were exactly how designer John Barnard wanted them. He'd read Porsche the riot act after its foot-in-the-water campaign with the engine in '83 and ended up with the neatly packaged powerplant he wanted.

The result was a car good enough to win 12 of 16 races in its debut season and to keep on winning grands prix and world championships over a three-year period.

Did you know?
Barnard never wanted to race the TAG V6 in the reworked MP4/1 in 1983. He wanted to wait until 1984 to hit the ground running with a bespoke car.

The change of plan that resulted in the E-spec MP4/1 arriving for the final races of '83 was motivated by Niki Lauda. The Austrian went above the team's head to try to bring forward the debut of the turbocar.

"Niki went to the head of Marlboro in Europe, Aleardo Bussi, and told him that McLaren was pissing around with the Cosworth," explains Lauda's team-mate, John Watson.

"That caused a major row between Ron [Dennis] and John Barnard."

McLaren MP4/4

Wins: 15
Poles: 15
Fastest laps: 10

The MP4/4 is up there on the list of all-time great racing cars from any discipline. Of that there can be no debate.

What is disputed is who should take credit for a car beaten only once - and for a bizarre reason - on the way to a clean sweep of drivers' and constructors' titles for Ayrton Senna and McLaren in '88.

That ongoing tiff is probably a storm in a tea cup. Steve Nichols and his team drew the car, and even if they were already heading in the same direction that newly installed tech boss Gordon Murray wanted to take the project, the ex-Brabham man was instrumental in persuading Honda to produce a new low-line version of its V6 engine for one season only.

Murray also made the most of it, coming up with a novel three-shaft gearbox. Lotus had the same engine and tilted it up, front to rear! At a stroke, its benefits were negated.

"It was one of those cars where every component spoke to every other component in the same language," says Emanuele Pirro, McLaren test driver for the MP4/4 in Japan. "There was a harmony to that car; that was the key to its success."

McLaren-BMW F1 GTR

BPR GT wins: 17
FIA GT wins: 5
All-Japan GT wins: 4

McLaren didn't want to go racing with its new F1 supercar, but its customers didn't give it much choice. Nor did it want the race version of the BMW-powered machine to go to the Le Mans 24 Hours in year one in 1995. Again, the customers won the day.

McLaren developed the F1 GTR, on a shoestring and in haste, at the behest of Ray Bellm and Thomas Bscher and then rushed through an endurance package when the first batch of customers all said they wanted to take the new car to Le Mans.

Amazingly, the car beat the prototypes in horrendous conditions to claim an historic victory in the hands of JJ Lehto, Yannick Dalmas and Masanori Sekiya.

The F1 GTR will be always remembered for that victory, but its arrival in the BPR-run Global Endurance GT Series raised the profile of the championship and gave the GT revival a new impetus.

Did you know?
The winning McLaren at Le Mans in 1995 completed the race with a clutch-release bearing that had already completed a full 24-hour distance.

A manufacturing issue with a new batch of bearings raised its head in qualifying and the Lanzante team and engineer Graham Humphrys chose to run an old bearing used in testing. It proved crucial in its victory.

McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13

Wins: 9
Poles: 12
Fastest laps: 9

Adrian Newey's departure from Williams even before Damon Hill had secured the 1996 world title almost certainly helped new employer McLaren return to the winner's circle after a three-year absence in 1997.

But it was on the arrival of the first Newey-designed McLaren in 1998 that the team returned to its rightful place as a world championship challenger.

Newey exploited the biggest revolution in the F1 rulebook since 1983 to create a car that was good enough to lap the field at the season opener in Australia in the hands of Mika Hakkinen.

Newey's stroke of genius had been to increase the wheelbase of the car, not only in the interests of aerodynamic efficiency but also diagonal stability.

Hakkinen would win seven more times - and team-mate David Coulthard once - on the way to a McLaren double of drivers' and constructors' titles.

"We needed that badly," reckons long-time McLaren employee and current F1 team boss Martin Whitmarsh. "We were always expected to be winning championships and in the 1990s we needed to get back to that.

"The 1998 season was the completion of a cycle that had really started in 1992 when we knew we were going to lose Honda, so it was very significant and very satisfying."

McLaren-Mercedes MP4-20

Wins: 10
Poles: 7
Fastest laps: 12

Adrian Newey's final design for McLaren was his most effective since his title winners of 1998 and '99 and arguably the class of the 2005 F1 field, at least for four-fifths of the season. Only a slow start to its championship campaign deprived the Woking team of the drivers' and constructors' titles.

Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya won 10 of the 18 races between them, started seven from pole position and notched up 12 fastest laps, but it was Renault that had hit the ground running by winning the first four races.

That meant Renault's Fernando Alonso was 29 points ahead of the Finn and McLaren was 21 points behind in the constructors' rankings before Raikkonen made it into the winner's circle in Spain.

Raikkonen ultimately fell short by 21 points, while McLaren missed out on the constructors' title glory by just nine.

For this and more on McLaren at 50, see the September 5 issue of AUTOSPORT magazine