When McLaren conquered F1 and the Indy 500

Only Lotus and McLaren have managed to win the Formula 1 world championship and America’s greatest race, the Indianapolis 500, in the same season. After Lotus’s 1965 double with Jim Clark, McLaren managed the feat twice in the 1970s with two truly great single-seaters that followed soon after the death of team founder Bruce McLaren.

We’re at Pembrey with McLaren’s Heritage team, the M16C/D in which Johnny Rutherford won the 1974 Indy 500, and one of the M23s that helped Emerson Fittipaldi to his second F1 crown a few months later. Both cars are the work of designer Gordon Coppuck, who joined McLaren when its total staff numbers had only just got into double figures, and follow the same basic concept.

McLaren’s first Indycar, the M15 of 1970, was decent but not a winner. Work in the wind tunnel persuaded Coppuck that Colin Chapman’s approach with that year’s F1 world championship-winning Lotus 72 – side radiators and a chisel nose in particular – could work on ovals, though he avoided such complications as anti-dive suspension or inboard brakes a la Lotus.

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Coppuck also cleverly integrated front and rear wings, which got McLaren around a ban on aero appendages. The M16 was ready for 1971 and immediately impressed Penske lead driver and engineer Mark Donohue, so a combined Penske-McLaren force descended upon Indy.

“We had a collaboration with Penske, and Mark had done a little bit of testing before we got to the Speedway so we had a little grounding,” says mechanic Hughie Absalom, who had joined McLaren in 1969. “We were the top dog and the general paddock talk was that we had made all the other cars obsolete. We even gave AJ Foyt a wing to play with to keep him on side!”

Works driver Peter Revson took pole in a McLaren 1-2-4 and Donohue led in Penske’s car before gearbox woes struck. Just over a month later, Donohue took McLaren’s first Indycar victory as a constructor at Pocono, then won again next time out at Michigan. After years of dominating Can-Am and winning in US F5000, McLaren had arrived on the ovals.

Watch: Back in '74 – When McLaren Conquered the Indy500 and F1 Titles

Donohue then took McLaren’s first Indy 500 win as a constructor with Penske’s car in a race of attrition in 1972 as Coppuck pushed on with the M16’s development. At the same time, he was applying the same ‘chisel’ idea in F1.

“The M16C had been under development while I was also designing the M23 for F1,” Coppuck told Autosport in 2020. “Things we’d discovered on the M16B and ideas we had in the season were investigated in the winter and went into developing both cars – Indycar and F1. We were learning new things in the wind tunnel and it was quite an exciting time.”

Before the arrival of pop-off valves to limit turbo boost in the interests of safety, McLaren’s Johnny Rutherford unofficially averaged 200mph at Indy. The combination of the M16, turbocharging and slick tyres has pushed things forward rapidly – in 1970 the pole speed had been ‘only’ 170mph…

"My car was so good that, when they dropped the green flag, in 12 laps I was running third"
Johnny Rutherford

Rutherford took pole in 1973 at over 198mph. He was a contender in the race until an exhaust header cracked and he fell to ninth, although Roger McCluskey took his McLaren to third in an event overshadowed by huge crashes and three fatalities.

By 1974, Coppuck had redesigned the suspension to eradicate understeer, Indycar had given up trying to ban wings, fuel tank rules had been tweaked for safety, and the consistent McCluskey had brought McLaren’s first Indycar title in Lindsey Hopkins’s M16. McLaren also finally committed more to Indycar, having only previously contested selected races.

“Up until 1974 we’d only done the 500-mile races and then us four mechanics spent the rest of the time helping the F1 guys and Can-Am, but you can’t beat experience so doing more races helped,” remembers Absalom. “The M16 was typical McLaren, very easy to work on, and Johnny was probably the first of the experienced oval racers we’d had. He was the perfect fit.”

The 1974 M16C/D now looked a lot like the M23 in which star signing Fittipaldi would contest the F1 season. Rutherford won at Ontario Motor Speedway but a blown engine on Pole Day limited him to 25th on the grid for the Indy 500. Being second quickest during the Month of May nevertheless indicated he would be a threat.

Experienced Rutherford quickly gelled with the M16

Photo by: Bill Murenbeeld / Motorsport Images

“That was a technical situation with a new chief steward in Tom Binford,” said Rutherford in April 2024. “He didn’t hold the same rules that the previous chief steward had. We scuffed a piston during the practice that morning [in qualifying].

“The guys hustled to the garage and in 58 minutes they turned the car around with a new engine and everything, and came back out to get in line. We were in line with plenty of time, but Binford said no, that we had had to be in line when the qualifying started. So, we were put back to the third day of qualifying.

“I had second quickest time and think if we had been able to race Foyt for the pole position, we could have won it. But we had to start 25th. My car was so good that, when they dropped the green flag, in 12 laps I was running third.”

The race quickly boiled down to a fight between Rutherford and poleman Foyt’s Coyote. Rutherford caught Foyt and got ahead when the Coyote had a slow pitstop. The battle raged until Foyt was black-flagged for leaking oil, leaving Rutherford to win by 22 seconds from Bobby Unser’s Eagle, the only runner not to be lapped, and scoop $245,000.

“I raced AJ until his car failed him and oil lines came loose and I was covered up with oil,” added Rutherford. “I had to back off from him and watched for oil on the track.

“I knew I could pass him anytime I wanted to. I was faster through the turns than he was. My thinking was, ‘Let’s give the fans a show and we’ll race one another.’

“I’d pull up beside him down the front straightaway and let him have the line into the corner. Once he pulled in the pits and was out of the race, then I got serious about trying to finish rather than serious about racing.”

“We’d gone there with a purpose and the purpose was to win,” adds Absalom. “We were achieving Bruce’s dream.”

Rutherford delivered Indy 500 victory for McLaren with turbocharged Offy racer that was built for circuits rather less twisty than Pembrey

Photo by: JEP

Autosport described the victory as a “tremendous achievement that puts McLaren among the really elite teams in the history of motor racing”. 

Indy was conquered – as would Milwaukee and Michigan in the subsequent weeks – but what about F1? After six rounds of the 15 championship races, Fittipaldi led Ferrari pairing Clay Regazzoni and Niki Lauda by two and three points respectively, having taken wins in Brazil and Belgium with chassis 5, our test car.

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“Turning his concept from an Indycar to an F1, the concept obviously evolved, and there’s lots of aspects of the tub and the aero package that carry over,” explains McLaren chief operating officer Piers Thynne. “But one of the really interesting things about the M23 is it was in F1 when there was the first mandated side impact panels on the sides of the chassis.

"The M23 was a strong car, very fast and stable in fast corners, with a very good weight distribution. It was an amazing car to drive"
Emerson Fittipaldi

“This was an important point where safety was being looked at seriously in F1, and they form part of a deformable structure inboard of the radiator ducts. This chassis rolled out at the beginning of 1974 when the livery changed from Yardley.”

The M23 had proved fast and won races in 1973 – in Revson’s and Denny Hulme’s hands – but arguably only got the top-line driver it needed when Fittipaldi arrived after ending his time at Lotus. He brought Marlboro sponsorship with him and McLaren was now ready for a title tilt.

“The M23 was a very conventional car, very easy to work on and very easy to get the set-up,” recalls Fittipaldi, now 77. “The first test was at Paul Ricard in December [1973] and I was very fast – the car was easy to drive.

“McLaren had very good logistics and planning – like at Monaco we had the shorter wheelbase car; we had three different wheelbases. Gordon and Alastair Caldwell were the most technical people and kept the car competitive in 1974 and 1975.

Fittipaldi praises the conventional M23 for being easy to set-up

Photo by: JEP

“The M23 was a strong car, very fast and stable in fast corners, with a very good weight distribution. It was an amazing car to drive and, with [team manager] Teddy Mayer, Alastair and Gordon, McLaren was always ahead and making the car consistent all year.”

Nevertheless, Lauda and the Ferrari 312B3 were the quickest combination of 1974 – as nine poles from the 15 GPs would eventually prove – and a first and a second in the Netherlands and France put the Austrian in command in July, with Regazzoni just behind.

Fittipaldi also had a problem – the M23’s rear suspension was struggling to get the most out of Goodyear’s wider and stiffer rubber, particularly on bumpy tracks. So, just as with the M16, Coppuck went back to the drawing board. Constant developments and tweaks were key to keeping both the M23 and M16 at the forefront.

With a little help from a packed pitlane that delayed erstwhile leader Lauda after a puncture, Fittipaldi beat both Ferraris with the revised M23 at Brands Hatch, finishing second to Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell 007. But retirements in Germany and Austria left him on the back foot again with three races to go.

A close second to old team-mate Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus 72 at Monza and victory at Mosport catapulted the Brazilian onto equal points with Regazzoni going into the Watkins Glen finale. Scheckter was also in contention, while a string of retirements had ended Lauda’s championship bid.

Fittipaldi qualified only eighth – two spots behind Scheckter and one ahead of Regazzoni – but quickly moved forward despite an early skirmish with his fast-starting Ferrari rival. “It was the only night I only slept three hours – it was enormous pressure,” says Fittipaldi.

“We surprised Ferrari because we dropped the rear wing for the race. On full tanks the car was good and on the main straight I slipstreamed Clay – he was never expecting a McLaren to pass in a straight line because the Ferrari was very fast. I went to the inside, he tried to push me on the grass, I turned the steering wheel to say, ‘If that’s the game we’re going to crash’, and he got scared, I passed him and I never backed off.”

Fittipaldi came out on top in crucial final round head-to-head at Watkins Glen to overcome Ferrari in 1974

Photo by: Sutton Images

With Regazzoni struggling with suspension issues throughout on his way to 11th, Fittipaldi followed Scheckter for much of the race, enough to take the title, and was gifted fourth when a broken fuel pick-up pipe halted the Tyrrell. Fittipaldi thus secured his second world title by three points.

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Despite Hulme’s struggle to score consistently heavily for McLaren, the F1 points system of the time – which rewarded only the highest placed driver from each team per race – helped McLaren pip Ferrari in the constructors’ contest.

Fittipaldi and the M23 was also the closest thing Lauda and his 312T would have to a rival in 1975 but, intriguingly, there was a chance that McLaren’s F1 and Indy stories could have been even more intertwined that year.

"[The M23 is] more mechanical than the later cars. So, you’ve got a lot more response from the suspension"
Rob Garofall

“I tested Johnny Rutherford’s car after Watkins Glen [in 1974], it was a Goodyear test,” reveals Fittipaldi. “I liked the car, it was perfect. I was quick the second day and they asked me to drive in 1975, but the monocoque was 2mm and I said, ‘I’m not going’. And it took 10 years to go back to Indy, when there was carbon fibre, and that’s why I’m still here!”

Given it was capable of well over 200mph in an era when the safety push was only just beginning, Fittipaldi’s view of the M16 is perhaps unsurprising. But what about the perspective of a current pilot?

McLaren’s trusted Heritage driver Rob Garofall is on hand at Pembrey to steer both of Coppuck’s designs. He agrees with Fittipaldi on the accessibility of the M23. “It’s brilliant,” says Garofall, who has driven around 80 McLarens. “It’s a DFV Cosworth engine, so it’s very easy to drive.

“It’s more mechanical than the later cars. So, you’ve got a lot more response from the suspension – the aero back then was in its infancy, almost. It’s a much more mechanical car to drive than the more modern cars, where you’re relying on downforce and ground effect.

Garofall cherished getting the chance to run in the M23

Photo by: JEP

“You really feel that’s where the expression ‘driving through the seat of your pants’ comes from because you’re feeling everything through your bum when you drive it. But we can drive that car a lot closer to its potential than some of the other cars.”

The M16 is a little more tricky, despite the fact that it’s also ‘only’ running about 450bhp today compared to the 700-800bhp (depending on boost levels) in period. The small Welsh circuit is a long way – geographically and in layout – from the superspeedways on which the M16 excelled.

“It’s a very industrial kind of build,” says Garofall. “It’s designed to go through corners at 180mph, so Pembrey with no diff in the back and solid rear axle – it’s not the easiest car in the world to drive. It’s got a turbo the size of a dustbin! So you’ve got not a lot of power and then all of a sudden a lot of power. It’s a bit lively.

“It’s got huge lag – you put the foot to the floor and then count a few seconds and you wait, then it just arrives.”

Considering how similar the two cars superficially appear, Garofall says they feel completely different: “Because the engine in the Indycar is quite an old design [with its origins dating back to the 1930s] and the DFV, in its time, was state of the art, that really makes the cars very different in feel. I can’t see or feel any similarities really between the two.”

Both the M16 and M23 kept evolving beyond 1974, with up-and-coming designer John Barnard assisting Coppuck, and in 1976 McLaren did it again.

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Rutherford’s second Indy win was followed by James Hunt’s remarkable F1 title at the famous Fuji finale, more than five years after the concept had first hit the track. Rutherford finished second in the Indycar standings three times with the M16, unreliability cruelly denying him at the end of 1976, but two poles, two victories and a second at the Indy 500 alone underlined the car’s superspeedway credentials.

“The M16 was the best flat-bottom car to ever run the Speedway,” concludes Rutherford. “It really filled all the gaps and it was a good, good car, fun car to drive. It was perfect for me.”

Garofall reckons the M16 feels completely different to drive compared to the M23

Photo by: JEP

How McLaren's legacy is helping its future

“For everybody in the team to be part of something – winning the Indy 500 in 1974, the world championship in 1974 – they have that legacy on a day-to-day basis. Legacy is one thing we cherish because not everyone has that.”

McLaren chief operating officer Piers Thynne is a driving force at McLaren’s Technology Centre, but he also loves heading trackside with some of the marque’s famous past racers. More than that, he believes the team’s history can play an important role today as McLaren strives to add more titles to its F1 tally of 12 drivers’ and eight constructors’ crowns.

“The legacy is hugely important to each and every one of the team, because we are forging forward in our 61st year of competing in motorsport,” he says. “And it’s really important to us delivering performance week in, week out on our current F1 car. But we are part of something, and that’s important that we are able to look over our shoulder and see the legacy of what’s happened in the past.”

"One of the things that we’ve done in the last 12 months is bring Heritage from an offsite facility back inside the MTC" 
Piers Thynne

Heritage projects also help provide training and experience for those set to work on the F1 team now that specific and busy test teams are no longer an option.

“Under the cost cap you divide it between labour and adding performance to the car,” explains Thynne. “Our systems, culture and process in Heritage, though slightly more relaxed, are the same as our F1 team.”

Thynne’s enthusiasm extends beyond the F1 machinery and includes the M16, which Autosport selected as the greatest Indycar of all time in 2020.

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“It was a very advanced chassis for its time,” he enthuses. “And the aerodynamic package then evolved through 1973 into 1974, where the safety regulations were changed and only inboard fuel tanks were allowed, with various geometry changes that allowed the speeds to increase.”

Thynne (middle) checks in with Garofall after a run

Photo by: JEP

But the M23, which ultimately won three world titles and 16 world championship GPs for McLaren, remains a favourite.

“I have a fantastic view from my office,” says Thynne. “I have a model of this car on the shelf and I can look at the model and the car behind it all in one view. I take huge inspiration from this. And one of the things that we’ve done in the last 12 months is bring Heritage from an offsite facility back inside the MTC.

“One of the things we personally enjoy as the Heritage team is being allowed and trusted to take these cars out and ensure that they are alive. All of our heritage cars we rebuild on a regular basis and ensure they can run for many years to come.”

Additional reporting by Joey Barnes, Tom Howard and Alex Kalinauckas

Thynne is fortunate enough to have a view of the M23 from his office

Photo by: JEP