2019 McLaren F1 Team: Drivers, Engine and Stats

The McLaren F1 team is the second oldest Formula One Team next to Ferrari. The team is under the McLaren Racing Limited Formula One Constructor which is based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey in England. It was founded in 1963 by Bruce McLaren, a New Zealander race car driver and designer.

History

The McLaren F1 team has been in competition every year since 1966 and is the second most winnest team after Ferrari with a total of 182 races won, 12 Drivers’ Championships and 8 Constructors’ Championships. McLaren won its first Grand Prix race in 1968 at the Belgian Grand Prix with McLaren himself winning the race. After McLaren’s death in a testing accident in 1970, Teddy Mayer took over the helm and led the team to its first ever Formula One Constructors’ Championship in 1974 with Emerson Fittipaldi also winning for McLaren its maiden Drivers’ Championship.

McLaren merged with Ron Denis’ Project Four Racing in 1981 with Denis becoming the team’s principal after buying out the original McLaren shareholders to take full control of the team. Success followed as McLaren would dominate with Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna winning a combined eight Drivers’ Championships and McLaren winning six Constructors’ Championships during the era. Together, Prost and Senna won all but one race in 1988 but everything soured when Prost left for Ferrari.

By the mid-90’s, Senna also left for fellow English Team Williams and Honda withdrew from Formula One. The team shifted to Mercedes-Benz engines, Mika Hakkinen won the Drivers’ Championship in 1998 and 1999 while Lewis Hamilton took their most recent title in 2008. Denis retired as principal in 2009 and the team switched back to using Honda Engines in 2015. However, McLaren announced in 2017 that they would be using Renault engines from 2018 to 2020.

The McLaren MCL34

McLaren’s 2019 car is called the MCL34 and it is powered by the Renault E-Tech 19 engine. Designed by Pat Fry and Peter Prodromou, it replaces the McLaren MCL33 which the team used during the 2018 FIA Formula 1 World Championship. Below are the key technical specifications of the MCL34’s engine:

POWER UNIT

INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE

The full technical specifications of the car can be viewed at McLaren.com:

The Drivers

McLaren was all change this season with Carlos Sainz moving in from Renault and rookie Lando Norris being promoted from Formula 2 to drive the second papaya orange car this season.

Sainz will be taking over from countryman Fernando Alonso who announced last year that he would no longer be racing in Formula One starting 2019. The 24-year old Sainz is from Madrid, Spain and began his racing career in karting before moving over to the Formula BMW Europe in 2010. In 2012, he began racing in the British and European F3 series. Three years later, Sainz would drive for Scuderia Toro Rosso during the 2015 Formula One season, replacing  Daniil Kvyat who was promoted to Red Bull. After 16 races during the 2017 season, Sainz transferred to the Renault Sport F1 team where he raced until last season.

Born in Bristol in the United Kingdom, Lando Norris was first interested in motorcycle racing but ended up in kart racing. After winning the European FIA F3 championship in 2017, he was runner-up to George Russell in the 2018 European FIA F2 championship. In February 2017, Norris signed a deal to be a junior driver with McLaren. Nine months later, he was named as official test and reserve driver for the 2018 FIA F1 season. One season later, he was tapped to partner Carlos Sainz for Renault’s 2019 season.

Here is the latest Drivers’ Standings as of 4/17/19: