Bruce McLaren, the founder of McLaren Racing, was a most remarkable man with a total dedication to all forms of racing. 2024 saw the McLaren Formula One racing team win the Constructors’ Championship - the team’s first since the heady days of 1998.
Maarten Hoffmann looks back at the all-too-short life of a pioneer, engineer, creator, disruptor – and factory sweeper and tea boy...
With drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, McLaren secured the 2024 Constructors Championship after a season of hard racing that went down to the wire at the final race of the season at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Bruce McLaren was a New Zealander and studied engineering at the University of Auckland before dropping out to focus on motor racing. He had an inherent talent for all things racing, not only as the designer of the cars but as the driver. He entered his first hill climb at 14, then progressed into Formula Two in 1957, winning the New Zealand Championship the following year.
This remarkable performance attracted the attention of Formula One and mainly, Jack Brabham, whom he went on to partner with at Cooper in 1959 having already debuted at the 1958 German Grand Prix, where he finished fifth in his Formula Two car.
Perhaps Bruce’s sheer determination stemmed from his childhood. Aged nine, he spent two long years in traction battling Perthe’s Disease, an illness which left him with one leg longer than the other and a permanent limp. It was to be no hindrance to his career.
Old photographs of Bruce show a young man, his face either smeared with the oil and dirt of the racetrack or creased into a warm, disarming smile. And while all who knew him talk of his simple nature and affability, they also mention his irrepressible drive and mesmerising charisma.
Aged 22, he went on to win his maiden race at the United States Grand Prix, becoming the youngest driver ever to win a Grand Prix, a record that stood for 44 years. He continued working with Brabham at Cooper but struggled for performance. At this point, he realised that it was the car that was letting him down and went on to launch his own team, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing in 1963.
He went on to win the Belgium Grand Prix in 1968 and finished third in the 1969 World Drivers’ Championship, a sensational achievement as he had only just designed the car, proving himself to be one of the finest racers and car designers of his generation - and many more generations after the McLaren win in 2024.
Outside of F1, he competed in nine editions of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning in 1966. He was also two-time champion of the Canadian-American Challenge Cup in 1967 driving his own M6A and M8B and won the Tasman Series in 1964.
His legacy was cemented with the McLaren Group, whose achievements included winning nine World Constructors Championships, two Indianapolis 500s and Le Mans in 1995 and he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991.
In June 1970, at the age of 32, he was testing the barnstorming McLaren M8D Can-Am car at Goodwood, a fortnight before of the opening race of the new series, he lost control when the rear bodywork came loose on the Lavant Straight just before the Woodcote corner and crashed into the marshal's post, and Bruce was killed instantly.
With the motor racing world still in shock, and with the shattered McLaren team slowly picking up the pieces, the grieving mechanics grimly packed up two Can-Am cars for that season-opener in Canada. Despite the heartbreak, and the stinging pain of their loss, the team did what only it could… they went racing – and they won.
“If Bruce had walked into the workshop one morning and told us we were all going to march across the Sahara Desert, we’d have immediately downed our tools and followed him,” remembers Howden Ganley, a fellow New Zealander who worked for Bruce in the early days before forging his own successful motorsport career. By all accounts, that’s no exaggeration.
McLaren’s Formula One effort was immediately respected for its solid engineering prowess and fun, no-nonsense attitude. The whole team clearly adored Bruce, who not only raced the cars and ran the team, but designed and engineered the cars, drove the transporter and swept the factory floor. As the boss, he led by example.
In 1968, Bruce took the first of the McLaren marque’s 182 Formula One wins – an achievement second only to Ferrari in Grand Prix racing’s all-time victory list. More would quickly follow, as Denny Hulme racked up two further victories before the end of the ’68 season.
As his business developed on both sides of the Atlantic, including a first tentative stab at developing a McLaren road car business, Bruce looked at how he could throttle back his efforts in the cockpit in order to further grow the McLaren brand.
At the beginning of the 1970 season, he confided in friends that he would hang up his helmet at the end of the year and focus all his efforts on the business. Sadly, he did not get the opportunity as he died that year.
Fifty-five years since his passing, Bruce McLaren remains an inspiration to every single person in the sport.
He knew instinctively how to build a successful team, attracting like-minded people who brought the required expertise. He knew that he couldn’t do everything himself – so he hired talented managers, designers and mechanics who became part of his journey, and he inspired them to ever greater heights. He achieved that both through the force of his personality and his own willingness to do whatever it took. If that meant sweeping the factory floor to create a better environment and allow others to get on with their jobs, he would do it.
“I have to think in a broader area,” he said of his role as team boss. “I need to know a bit about psychology – you have to if you want to get more out of people. I also need to know a bit about administration and, of course, engineering. But that’s mostly to make sure that a bloke knows what he’s talking about, and the job isn’t being done in the wrong way.”
The famous words that Bruce wrote after the death of his team-mate Timmy Mayer in Australia in 1965 encapsulated his own outlook on life: “To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.”
Those words proved to be befitting of Bruce himself. He tragically lost his own life while doing what he loved most – testing the performance limits of his latest racing car.
McLaren was a competitive driver, but his legacy, the McLaren racing team, stems from his abilities as an analyst, engineer, and manager. In the early days of McLaren sports cars, McLaren was testing and as he drove out of the pits, he noticed the fuel filler access door was flapping up and down as he drove.
The current aerodynamic thinking was that it should have been pressed more firmly in place as the speed of the car increased. Instead, it bounced more vigorously as the speed increased. Instantly, his frustration at the sloppy work changed and he had an insight. Stopping in the pits, he grabbed a pair of shears and started cutting the bodywork away behind the radiator. Climbing back in the car, he immediately began turning lap times faster than before.
Later, he explained, I was first angry that the filler door hadn't been properly closed but then I began to wonder why it wasn't being pressed down by the airflow. The only answer was that there had to be a source of higher pressure air under it than over it.
From that session came the ‘nostrils' that have been a key McLaren design feature, including in the McLaren P1 road car.
Looking at the current 2024 World Constructors Championship Team, Zak Brown is the Chief Executive Officer. He has overall responsibility for the business, including strategic direction, operational performance, marketing and commercial development.
Since joining the team in 2017, he has led the transformation of the brand and culture of the McLaren Formula One team and put in place the people, resources, infrastructure and mindset that has enabled McLaren to return to racing at the front of the Formula One grid. Zak has taken McLaren Racing onto a global motorsport stage, with McLaren teams now racing in IndyCar, Formula E, Extreme E and eSports, with the World Endurance Championship joining the line up in 2024.
We should be rightfully proud of McLaren as a UK based racing team located in their futuristic building in Woking, Surrey and, until recently, 100% UK owned. Now the largest shareholder of the McLaren Group is the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company, the sovereign wealth fund for the Kingdom of Bahrain. In other words, McLaren is primarily owned by the royal family of Bahrain, though it remains a public company.
