Mika Hakkinen drove for the McLaren team from 1993, two years after he moved into Formula 1. The team is based in Woking, England and was headed by Ron Dennis during Mika's tenure.  The company Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd was formed by Bruce McLaren in 1963 and they made their F1 debut at Monaco in 1966. The death of Bruce McLaren in 1970 was untimely and occurred while he was testing a a CanAm race car.

In 1980 a merger between the Project Four race team and Team McLaren formed the current company, McLaren International.  Ron Dennis, the managing director of Project Four then became Managing Director of the new company. At present there are approximately 325 employees involved in the operations of McLaren International.

The team has won 8 Constructor's World Championship titles and 10 Driver's World Championship titles.

In 1995 McLaren entered into a long term partnership with Mercedes-Benz, who supply badged engines to the team, which are in fact constructed by Ilmor Engineering in the UK.

The driver line up for the team from 1995-2001 was Finn Mika Hakkinen and Scot David Coulthard. The drivers, who raced everywhere from the famous casino city of Monte Carlo to down under in Melbourne were considered equal in the team and there were no team orders "whilst it is mathematically possible for either driver to win the driver's championship". This was an often quoted line by Ron Dennis and an unusual arrangement in comparison to other F1 teams.

In 1998 the team won the Constructor's Championship. In 1999 however Ferrari managed to beat them into second place and take it for themselves.

Check out the book by Alan Henry which goes into further detail on the McLaren team. Click on the picture to the right for more information. It provides far more information than we can here!