Ten momentous McLaren F1 wins: stand-out victories from 1000 GP starts

But the old Spa punished mechanical components and fuel calculations with equal indifference across its 8.7 miles of public road.

At the end of the penultimate lap of the race, holding a comfortable 30-second lead, Stewart’s car ran out of fuel. He was forced to coast into the pits, dropping to fourth place.

McLaren, who had driven with composure to maintain his position near the front, inherited the lead.

The M7A, powered by a Ford Cosworth DFV engine in only its second season of competition, proved reliable and quick enough.

So sudden was the final-lap drama that McLaren crossed the finish line completely unaware that he had actually won. Pit communication was primitive; he pulled into the paddock believing he had finished second or third, only to be informed by a mechanic that he had taken the chequered flag.

“It was about the nicest thing I’d ever been told,” McLaren said at the time.

The win proved to be the only Formula 1 World Championship victory Bruce McLaren would score for his own team. He was killed testing a Can-Am car at Goodwood in June 1970, just two years later.

1968 Belgian GP race report

Emerson Fittipaldi
1974 Brazilian Grand Prix

When Emerson Fittipaldi walked away from Lotus to join McLaren for the 1974 season, the move raised eyebrows.

He was already a world champion, confirmed as one of the quickest drivers of his generation, and Lotus, for all its internal friction, had given him a championship-winning car just two years earlier.

McLaren, by contrast, was a powerhouse on the rise, highly competitive but still hunting its first world title.

The Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos was the second round of the 1974 season, and winning it carried a significance that went well beyond the championship points.

Interlagos in those years was a 4.9-mile layout unrecognisable from its current configuration, and demanding in ways that suited a driver of Fittipaldi’s technical precision.

Fittipaldi sent the home crowd into hysterics by taking pole ahead of Carlos Reutemann and Niki Lauda.

The race itself was anything but straightforward.

The start was delayed after officials swept the circuit and completed final preparations, and when the field finally got away, Arturo Merzario was hurried into position after last-minute work on his car.

Carlos Reutemann led in the opening laps, but by lap four Ronnie Peterson had taken the lead.

What followed was a genuine duel between Fittipaldi and Peterson, the reigning champion hunting down the Lotus driver before taking the lead on lap 16.

Peterson’s challenge then ended when a slow puncture forced him to pit.

Just as the order was beginning to settle behind Fittipaldi, a violent summer monsoon rolled over the circuit.

With conditions fast becoming completely undriveable, officials threw the red flag on lap 32, freezing the race and securing Fittipaldi a brilliant, shortened victory.

He went on to take the world championship that year, capturing McLaren’s first-ever drivers’ and constructors’ titles.

1974 Brazilian GP report   

James Hunt
1976 Dutch Grand Prix

By the time Formula 1 arrived at Zandvoort on 29 August 1976, the championship had been turned on its head.

Niki Lauda’s near-fatal crash at the Nürburgring three weeks earlier had left him hospitalised and absent, handing Hunt an open track and a closing window he could not afford to waste. Fittingly, it was also Hunt’s 29th birthday.

Ronnie Peterson took pole position for March, with Hunt alongside him on the front row.

Hunt’s patience proved the decisive quality in the race.

Peterson led early, challenged by a chasing John Watson, who attempted to pass on lap 7 but made a mistake at Tarzan, allowing Hunt through to close up on Peterson.

Hunt then relentlessly shadowed Peterson, and took the lead on lap 12, after which Watson’s Penske remained a major threat until its gearbox failed on lap 47.

Watson’s brilliant challenge ultimately ended with that gearbox failure, while Peterson’s day also disintegrated due to terminal oil pressure problems.

With his primary challengers sidelined, Hunt withstood a late-race charge from Clay Regazzoni, who claimed second for Ferrari, with Mario Andretti completing the podium for Lotus.

The win was Hunt’s fifth in Formula 1, and it mattered enormously in the title fight.

The victory would have closed the gap at the top of the standings to just five points, although his retroactive removal from the British Grand Prix results meant the actual deficit to Lauda remained 14.

With Lauda expected to be returning at Monza, the championship was far from decided, but Zandvoort had kept Hunt in the fight.

1976 Dutch GP report

Alain Prost
1986 Australian Grand Prix

Few Formula 1 championships have been decided in circumstances as dramatic, or as unlikely, as Adelaide in October 1986.

Alain Prost arrived at the season finale as the underdog in a tense three-way title fight between himself, Nelson Piquet, and Nigel Mansell, and left as world champion.

Mansell led on 70 points, Prost had 64, and Piquet 63. Under the complex “best-11 results” scoring system of the era, Prost needed a top-two finish paired with a Mansell disaster to claim the crown.

His McLaren-TAG was not close to the outright pace of the dominant Williams-Hondas, and when Mansell scorched to pole, the story seemed to be writing itself.

The first turning point came a few laps after Piquet’s spin on lap 23, when a puncture on Prost’s right-front tyre forced him into the pits and dropped him back to fourth.

It looked as though his race, and his championship, was ruined, but it eventually proved a blessing in disguise.

Goodyear technicians inspected the tyres and, seeing low wear on the rubber, they erroneously informed the teams they could reach the end of the race without a scheduled stop.

That information would prove catastrophic.

On lap 62, Keke Rosberg retired when his rear tyre suddenly delaminated. Just two laps later, the championship exploded. Mansell’s left-rear tyre blew apart at 180mph down the Brabham Straight in a shower of sparks.

He somehow brought the Williams to a halt without hitting the barriers, but his race was over.

Terrified of a matching failure, Williams had no choice but to call Piquet in for a precautionary tyre change, handing Prost the lead.

Piquet closed the gap furiously over the final laps, bringing it down to just over four seconds, but it wasn’t enough.

Prost crossed the line first, and with it became the first back-to-back world champion since Jack Brabham in 1959 and 1960.

1986 Australian GP report

Ayrton Senna
1991 Brazilian Grand Prix

For all his greatness, Ayrton Senna had never won his home grand prix. Seven attempts, seven failures.

He felt absolutely compelled to correct that unusual deficit once and for all as a question of national pride.

He arrived at Interlagos in March 1991 as defending world champion and promptly took pole, outpacing the Williams pair of Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese.

He made a perfect start to lead, building a gap of 2.6 seconds by lap 6. Mansell closed, however, and by lap 21 the gap was about one second.

Then Mansell pitted, a stop that lasted over 14 seconds, and the immediate threat receded. What followed was less a race than an exercise in survival.

Unknown to observers, Senna’s gearbox was failing, having lost fourth gear, and with around 20 laps to go his lead was coming under pressure again. Then, on lap 61, Mansell’s own gearbox gave way entirely and he retired, the crowd at Interlagos erupting.

But Senna’s reprieve was short-lived. Later, he also lost third and fifth gears, leaving Patrese closing rapidly in the Williams.

Rain began to fall. Gesturing to race officials as he crossed the line to start the final lap, Senna still wanted the race called to a halt early, but did not get his wish.

He held on by 2.991 seconds, and had to be lifted from the McLaren and driven to the podium in the medical car due to exhaustion. It had taken him eight attempts, but he finally had his home win.

1991 Brazilian GP report

Ayrton Senna
1993 European Grand Prix

The 1993 season had a foregone conclusion written all over it.

Williams had the fastest car by a distance, Prost had the drive, and Senna, in an underpowered McLaren-Ford, was fighting a battle he could not win on merit alone.

What he could do, in the right conditions, was remind everyone exactly what he was. Donington Park in April provided those conditions.

Prost took pole, with Damon Hill alongside him on the front row. Senna qualified fourth, over a second and a half off the pace. Rain was falling at the start. From that point, the race belonged to one man.

Michael Schumacher moved towards Senna at the first corner, with the result that Karl Wendlinger went past both of them. Senna was down to fifth.

What followed on the opening lap is now part of Formula 1 folklore, known as ‘The Lap of the Gods’.

Senna quickly passed Schumacher after Redgate, then went after Wendlinger, passing him at the Old Hairpin. He took Hill at McLean’s Corner, and then, at the Melbourne Hairpin, he took the lead from Prost. One lap. Four drivers. In the rain.

He began lapping a couple of seconds quicker than anyone else. Not even the constantly changing conditions would disrupt this momentum, with Senna repeatedly judging the tyre changes better than his rivals.

The variable weather produced a strategic puzzle that Senna solved with a masterclass in tyre management and racecraft. He made four pitstops in the wet-dry conditions; Prost, who finished third, made seven.

With the race in his hands and well ahead of his adversaries, Senna posted the fastest lap of the grand prix by driving straight through the pitlane on lap 57.

Peeling in for tyres only to find his team unready, he exploited the lack of a pitlane speed limit on a layout that bypassed the track’s final tight hairpin.

It was an accidental strategic loophole that Senna later looked back on with amusement — the perfect punctuation mark on a weekend where he was operating on a completely different plane of intelligence than the rest of the grid.

1993 European GP report

Kimi Räikkönen
2005 Japanese Grand Prix

By October 2005, the drivers’ championship was already settled.

Fernando Alonso had claimed his first title two weeks earlier in Brazil, leaving the Japanese Grand Prix as a race supposedly without individual stakes, even though Renault and McLaren were still fighting for the constructors’ crown.

The groundwork for a stellar Sunday was laid by the previous morning’s rain. Showers before and during qualifying left the front-running trio of Kimi Räikkönen, Alonso, and Juan Pablo Montoya towards the back of the grid.

2005 was the last season of single-lap qualifying, and the rainstorm had inverted the grid. Ralf Schumacher took pole for Toyota, while Räikkönen would start 17th.

The race itself was an exhibition of overtaking. The previous-year’s world champion Michael Schumacher spent the first half of the race trying to parry the charging field, culminating in Alonso executing a legendary pass around the outside of the Ferrari at the 200-mph 130R corner.

Räikkönen then fought his own battle with the elder Schumacher, executing a superb pass around the outside into Turn 1 on lap 30.

From there, Räikkönen rose inexorably through the field while Giancarlo Fisichella led from the front for Renault.

Räikkönen was the last driver to pit on lap 45 of 53, emerging over five seconds behind race leader Fisichella before he started to demolish the gap.

Lapping significantly quicker than the Renault, Räikkönen caught Fisichella’s tail on the penultimate lap.

Feeling the pressure, Fisichella defended far too heavily into the final chicane, compromising his exit speed onto the front straight.

Räikkönen ruthlessly pounced, flying around the outside of the Renault at Turn 1 on the final lap to snatch a last-gasp triumph — his sixth win of the season and seventh in Formula 1.

It remains widely viewed as one of his greatest Formula 1 drives.

2005 Japanese GP recap

Lewis Hamilton
2008 British Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton arrived at Silverstone in July 2008 in need of a response.

An embarrassing pitlane crash in Canada, followed by a failure to score in France, had left him 10 points off championship leader Felipe Massa, with Robert Kubica and Räikkönen also ahead of him in the standings.

A first home grand prix victory would mean everything.

Qualifying had not helped his cause. A mistake on his final Q3 run left him fourth on the grid, while his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen took an unexpected pole alongside Mark Webber and Räikkönen.

But the forecast was for rain, and Hamilton was in his element.

At the start, Hamilton launched brilliantly from fourth, surging immediately into contention behind Kovalainen on the run down to the very first turn.

Hamilton shadowed Kovalainen through the spray before executing a decisive pass for the lead at Stowe on lap 5.

From there, Hamilton and a recovering Räikkönen began to break away on a temporarily drying track. The pair sat close together when they pitted at the same time at the end of lap 21, setting up what looked like a tense, two-man fight for victory.

Ferrari then handed the race away. While McLaren fitted Hamilton with a fresh set of intermediates in anticipation of more rain, Ferrari opted to keep Räikkönen on his worn set, only topping him up with fuel.

The shower hit just a few laps later, drenching the circuit once again and Räikkönen sank.

From there, Hamilton cruised to the finish, his official margin of victory over Nick Heidfeld over a full minute.

Rubens Barrichello in third was the only other driver not to be lapped by Hamilton, who scored his first of many Silverstone wins.

2008 British GP report

Jenson Button
2011 Canadian Grand Prix

In 2011, Montreal produced one of the most chaotic, sodden, improbable afternoons F1 has ever seen, and Jenson Button, from seventh on the grid, won it having led less than one lap.

Sebastian Vettel had won five of the first six races of the season and held a commanding championship lead. In Canada, he qualified on pole.

Rain arrived before the start, and the race got underway behind the safety car for four laps. Of the opening 40 laps, only 12 were run under racing conditions.

Button’s race had a disastrous early section which included a clash with team-mate Lewis Hamilton, a puncture, and a drive-through penalty that left him last.

On lap 24, with the rain now torrential and after several laps behind the safety car, the race was red-flagged, Vettel leading from Kamui Kobayashi, Felipe Massa, Nick Heidfeld, Vitaly Petrov, Paul di Resta, Mark Webber, Fernando Alonso, Pedro de la Rosa and Button in 10th.

The suspension lasted two hours and four minutes.

At the restart, Button passed de la Rosa, then switched to intermediates at the end of the first green lap. Soon after, he collided with Alonso and suffered another puncture, sending him back to the pits and effectively to the rear again.

What followed was a long game.

Button was one of the first drivers to switch to slick tyres as the track dried, pitting two laps earlier than Vettel, with passes on Heidfeld and Kobayashi leaving him fourth with 15 laps to go, the gap to Vettel falling from 47 seconds to just 15.

A sixth safety car period, triggered by Heidfeld’s crash, then wiped out those gaps entirely.

At the restart, Button capitalised on a mistake from Mark Webber at the final chicane on lap 64, then passed Michael Schumacher along the back straight a lap later.

Now only Vettel remained.

On the final lap, Vettel led by 0.9 seconds, but then ran wide at Turn 6. Button drove through to win.

The race lasted four hours, four minutes and 39.537 seconds, the longest in Formula 1 history. Button led about half of the final lap.

2011 Canadian GP report

Lando Norris
2024 Miami Grand Prix

The question of when Lando Norris would win his first Formula 1 race had become one of Formula 1’s most persistent storylines.

He had reached 15 podium finishes before Miami, a figure that reflected both his talent and the cruel habit of near-misses that had followed him around.

Miami, in May 2024, was finally where the wait ended.

Max Verstappen had started from pole and built an early lead, while struggling throughout with his RB20’s balance.

Sergio Perez had narrowly avoided wiping out Verstappen at the Turn 1 braking zone at the start, with Charles Leclerc taking second and Piastri, who had made a superb getaway, rising to third.

Norris, starting fifth, was initially held up by Perez before the Red Bull pitted on lap 18, releasing him into clean air. He spent the next phase of the race posting a string of fastest laps, working his way towards the front.

On lap 23, Verstappen cut the Turn 14–15 chicane, dislodging a bollard and triggering a pit stop shortly afterwards. Leclerc had already pitted on lap 18, and Piastri and Carlos Sainz stopped on lap 27, cycling Norris to the front.

On lap 28, the full safety car was deployed after Kevin Magnussen made contact with Logan Sargeant at Turn 3, sending the Williams into the barriers.

Norris dived into the pits and emerged effectively still in the lead once the safety-car order was sorted out, his tyres six laps fresher than Verstappen’s.

At the restart, Norris defended from Verstappen at Turn 1, quickly built a gap, and pulled away commandingly over the remaining 24 laps.

He crossed the line 7.612 seconds clear, a race winner, at the 110th time of asking.

2024 Miami GP report