Honda will return to Formula 1 as an engine supplier with McLaren in 2015 to revive their famous partnership which brought domination of the sport in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Japanese company had its own team between 2006 and 2008, but during that time, it managed just one win – the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix with Jenson Button – and the manufacturer ended the project at the end of 2008, as the global economic crisis struck. However, Honda has been lured back to the sport by a change in the engine regulations from 2014, with 1.6 litre More…

Britain’s Jenson Button has described McLaren’s current form as “embarrassing” following the Spanish Grand Prix where he finished eighth, one place ahead of team mate Sergio Perez. McLaren, who won the final race of last season with what was considered to be the fastest car on the grid, made major changes to their machine for 2013, while their rivals took an evolutionary approach. As a result, they have dropped down the grid and currently lie sixth in the constructors’ championship, 102 points behind leaders Red Bull while Button is best placed in the drivers’ standings 64 behind leader Sebastian Vettel. More…

McLaren’s Jenson Button has voiced his frustration at the way television companies select team radio messages to broadcast during races because he believes they don’t always tell the full story. Radio messages have become even more of a talking point following the Bahrain Grand Prix where Button, 33, and team mate Sergio Perez, 23, clashed on track and then criticised each other after the race. While battling over fifth place, Perez tapped the back of Button, breaking off part of his front wing, prompting Button to get on the radio and say: “He’s just hit me up the back. Calm More…

The McLaren Group’s electronics business has been awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its work in international trade. McLaren Electronic Systems (MESL) sells electronics, software and components internationally, with the company saying export sales are up by more than 60% since 2008. MESL is the supplier of the official engine control unit for all teams in the Formula 1 World Championship – a contract which the company has had for 20 years – and also provide the same service to the American Nascar Sprint Cup stock car and IndyCar single-seater series’. Outside of motorsport, the company sells its products – More…

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh is confident Jenson Button and Sergio Perez will be able to move on after the team mates clashed several times in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Perez, who joined McLaren from Sauber this season, has had a lacklustre start to the season, prompting Whitmarsh to tell him earlier this week that he needs to “toughen up” and “use his elbows” – and in Bahrain, the Mexican did just that. The 23-year-old boldly overtook Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso to show signs of the spark which attracted McLaren to him in the first place. More…

It’s tough times for McLaren at the moment: Sergio Perez has yet to get his season started while Jenson Button says his team still lack the pace to compete with the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and Lotus despite scoring his best result of the season in China. The 2009 world champion battled to ninth place in Australia and then failed to finish in Malaysia, after earlier being on target for a top six finish. But in China, buoyed by some new upgrades and a brave strategy, he finished fifth. In each case McLaren has gambled on strategy, because More…

A few weeks after announcing that its title sponsorship deal with Vodafone would end in December, McLaren has today unveiled a new sponsorship with Gillette, initially focussed on Asia. And it offers some pointers to McLaren’s long term commercial plans. The deal begins as of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix. Despite strong signals that money supply is tight for many teams in F1, this deal also indicates that there is a willingness for global companies to enter the sport, following on the heels of the arrival of Emirates, Rolex, UPS, Blackberry and Experian in the last few months. Gillette Brazil More…

It’s been one of the worst starts to a season for the McLaren team, but there is defiance from within the ranks that sticking with the 2013 design is a better path than reverting to the old car, which won the last two races of 2012. Speaking in the Sepang paddock this afternoon, Jenson Button said that they would stick with the Plan A and work with the 2013 design. It meant that they would be able to “take more risks” than their rivals because they are chasing results. “It’s better to stick to the plan and develop and improve More…

McLaren’s first ever world champion Emerson Fittipaldi will write a regular column for the team’s rebranded website this season. Fittipaldi, who won the second of his two world championships while driving a McLaren in 1974, won 14 grands prix during his career. The Brazilian became the sport’s youngest ever Formula world champion when he won his first title with Lotus – aged 25 years and 273 before losing the record to Fernando Alonso in 2005. Fittipaldi, 66, is also one of only five men to have won both the Indianpolis 500 and the F1 World Championship – Jim Clark, Graham More…

Britain’s Jenson Button says his new McLaren is not capable of winning a grand prix in its current spec after he trailed home ninth in the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. The 2009 world champion, who had tasted victory at Albert Park in three of the last four years before Sunday’s race, lacked the pace to contend with the likes of Lotus, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. Kimi Raikkonen went on to take victory for Lotus, ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Red Bull’s reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel while Button took ninth and his team-mate Sergio Perez finished outside More…

Mexican driver Sergio Perez says he’s not feeling the pressure ahead of McLaren debut in Australia this weekend as he sets his sights on winning the world championship. Perez, 23, scored three podiums last season, and just missed out on victory in Malaysia, which prompted McLaren to sign him as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton. Despite only having two seasons under his belt before stepping into a front-running car, Perez told the latest edition of the JA on F1 podcast that he’s unfazed. “Every time you come to a big team, you’re going to replace a big name driver,” said More…

Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and the McLaren Group have announced a new initiative which will use the science behind Formula 1 to help encourage young people to take an interest in science at school. The programme is part of GSK’s Scientists in Sport campaign, which will be unveiled this week at the Big Bang national science fair (14-17 March). It aims to inspire 11-14 year olds to continue studying science as research suggests not enough roles in science technology, engineering and maths occupations are being filled. Together with McLaren, GSK are running a competition called “The Fast Forward Challenge” where More…

McLaren and TAG Heuer have announced a new partnership which sees the watchmaker extend its commitment to the British team. Speaking at the Geneva Motor Show, TAG Heuer president and CEO Jean-Christophe Babin and executive chairman of the McLaren Group Ron Dennis said that the watchmaker would continue to supply the official timepiece to the Formula 1 team. The partnership also extends to include McLaren Automotive, the sports car arm of the business which includes the 12C and McLaren P1. TAG Heuer, who began its relationship with McLaren 28 years ago, will also support McLaren’s Young Driver Development programme, a More…

McLaren and Vodafone will end their long-running title sponsorship deal at the end of the season. During the partnership, which began in 2007 and was worth $75m per year according to the Financial Times, the team won 34 races and the 2008 drivers’ world championship with Lewis Hamilton. In a statement ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, McLaren said they would announce a replacement for their title sponsor for 2014 after the conclusion of the season on 2 December. McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said: “We’re immensely proud that, having been set a number of ambitious challenges by Vodafone More…

There has been a lot of speculation in recent days about Honda and McLaren reviving the famous partnership, which brought domination of F1 in the later 1980s and early 1990s. It began towards the end of last season, but has grown in intensity recently. This is probably due to the fact that attention is now focussing on the major engine changes in 2014 and McLaren has every reason to want to move away from Mercedes, despite having an option to use their new generation hybrid engines in 2014 and 2015. In the last few years Mercedes has withdrawn as a More…

Sergio Perez says his new McLaren team have made a “huge leap” forward with their performance from the first test in Jerez to the second in Barcelona. The Mexican, who is about to start his first season with the team after joining from Sauber, topped the timesheets on day two of running at the Circuit de Catalunya, finishing 0.349 seconds quicker than reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull. Though he refused to get excited about the headline time, Perez was pleased with the car’s progress and how he was getting used to the feel of his new More…

McLaren have signed 2012 EuroCup Formula Renault 2.0 champion Stoffel Vandoorne to their Young Driver Programme. The 20-year-old, who scored four race wins and 11 podiums last season, has graduated to the Formula Renault 3.5 series this year and will compete for Fortec Motorsports. The Belgian joins fellow Formula Renault 3.5 driver Kevin Magnussen, son of former McLaren race driver Jan Magnussen, and EuroCup driver Nyck de Vries on the programme. The initiative is designed to build on the young drivers’ racing performances as they climb the motorsport ladder as well as providing guidance in the off-track skills demanded of More…

Sergio Perez showed that pre-season testing is in full swing today by going fastest on the second day at Barcelona with a time just shy of last year’s pole position, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. Perez and Vettel both set their times during a one-lap run on the soft tyre, before switching their attentions to extended stints in the afternoon. Whilst Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton behind set their fastest laps on the medium and hard compound respectively, with Hamilton’s lap in particular likely to make the other teams raise an eyebrow as it was set during an eight More…

As the new F1 cars got down to business on the first day of testing in Jerez, Jenson Button and McLaren overcame an early on-track stoppage to top the time sheets by a considerable margin, ahead of Mark Webber and Romain Grosjean. But there were troubles for Mercedes too, as they were forced to cut the opening day short with electrical problems. Two red flags in the morning caused by Button and Nico Rosberg put the brakes on their respective programmes, with Rosberg the most hampered as Mercedes opted to call it a day and solve the issue before Lewis More…

McLaren boss Ron Dennis has spoken out about the importance of loyalty in the wake of the departure of Lewis Hamilton to Mercedes and the ongoing discussions with technical director Paddy Lowe over his mooted move the same way. Speaking to the Financial Times’ Roger Blitz, Dennis said that loyalty has always been a first order priority in his organisation, “You cut yourself, you bleed McLaren,” he said. “We’re about winning, we care about how we win . . . We want to win with the right principles, the right values. If people don’t want to be part of that and want to go More…

They may have lost Lewis Hamilton, but McLaren moved forward into the future with a proud and confident message, underlining their 50 years of F1 heritage, as they launched their 2013 challenger today. Jenson Button said he aims to win the world championship and believes the car capable of it. The new silver McLaren does not have Hamilton’s name on the side for the first time in seven years, instead Jenson Button and Sergio Perez lead the challenge against the Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes team. The 50th anniversary was acknowledged by a cavalcade of former McLaren race winning More…

This year will see the 50th anniversary of the McLaren racing team, and the Woking-based squad has announced that it will host a number of events throughout the year leading up to its celebration half a century on from the inauguration of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing, on September 2nd 1963. The eight-time Constructors’ Championship winners will display a special ‘McLaren 50’ logo on this years MP4-28 and on their team shirts, whilst a heritage video is also in the making to mark the achievement. Ron Dennis CBE, executive chairman, McLaren Group and McLaren Automotive, said: “McLaren’s history is long and More…

McLaren today officially unveiled its new driver Sergio Perez, in McLaren colours, at media events in the team’s HQ at Woking and in Central London And the 22 year old Mexican made a bullish start, saying that he hopes to fight for the world title from the first race onwards and that he will be disappointed if he does not beat Jenson Button during their scheduled three-year partnership. Button will start his 229th Grand Prix in Melbourne while Perez will be starting only his 38th. To have landed a McLaren seat so soon is remarkable, but Perez is mindful that More…

Sam Michael believes there are no hidden motives behind Lewis Hamilton leaving McLaren and that the driver’s desire to take on a new challenge simply outweighed everything else, even the chance to continue driving a proven race-winning car. The McLaren sporting director gave his assessment on Hamilton’s momentous decision to swap Woking for Mercedes from 2013 while looking back on some of the major talking points of the season alongside a panel of fellow experts in the December edition of the JA on F1 podcast (click here to download). When Hamilton’s three-year Mercedes deal was made public at the end More…

Lewis Hamilton’s final race for McLaren in Brazil represented a clear closing of an era for the Woking squad both in terms of its long-standing relationship with its one-time protégé and, after three season and 58 races in tandem, the team’s high-profile all-British world champion driver line-up. While Hamilton’s hopes of saying farewell with an Interlagos victory were scuppered when Nico Hulkenberg slid into him at turn one, Jenson Button was able to pick up the pieces and lay down a marker for 2013 when he will inevitably assume additional responsibility and expectation at the team given the relative inexperience More…

Lewis Hamilton has claimed his seventh pole position of the season and the last for McLaren, at the season ending Brazilian Grand Prix, heading a McLaren front row with Mark Webber in third. It was McLaren’s 62nd front row lock out, which establishes a new F1 record. After his well judged win in Austin last weekend, this was Hamilton once again on form, highlighting what might have been had the McLaren been as reliable as it has been fast this season. The title battle between Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso meanwhile, will see the two start three places apart, with More…

Lewis Hamilton followed up his win in Austin last Sunday with a strong performance in practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix season finale. The McLaren driver set a fastest time of 1m 14.028 to head championship leader Sebastian Vettel by 0.274 secs. Having set the fastest low-fuel time on the medium tyre, his performance on the long runs also looked good, however he did give the tyres a breather from time to time, which he will not be able to do in race conditions. Rivals did unbroken sequences of laps, so the picture is not as clear as it may More…

Lewis Hamilton’s father, Anthony, has given a revealing insight into how his relationship with his son has evolved over the last couple of years and why the move to Mercedes is another example of him flying the nest. Hamilton Snr’s presence in McLaren’s post-race celebrations of Hamilton’s brilliant victory in Austin pointed towards father and son having firmly been reconciled this year after a period in which their relationship, publicly at least, has appeared more distant. The pair had been famously more akin to a double act as Lewis came through the motorsport ranks and into his record-breaking early years More…

McLaren is putting itself at the heart of the FIA’s new adventure into electric vehicle motorsport via a deal for its McLaren Electronic Systems division to supply electric engines, transmissions and electronics to the new Formula E series, starting in 2014. The company, which has the contracts to supply the standard Electronic Control Units to all F1 and NASCAR teams, is joining forces with Frederic Vasseur, the man behind ART Grand Prix, with whom McLaren placed Lewis Hamilton for his successful Euro F3 and GP2 apprenticeship. Vasseur’s Spark Racing Technologies company is building the cars for the new series, which More…

McLaren has maintained its pre-eminent status among the Formula 1 grid for its environmental consciousness by retaining the Carbon Trust Standard it was first awarded two years ago. The Woking-based oufit has taken a lead in F1 in recent years in improving its carbon efficiency and originally earned the certificate in December 2010 after three years of assessment and management aimed at reducing its carbon footprint. This week the body recertified the McLaren Group following two further years of progress which has seen a relative reduction in its carbon footprint by 9% despite the expansion of its Woking base. This More…

The third and final leg of the fractured 2012 young guns test got underway for six teams in more traditional surroundings in Abu Dhabi today and it was a driver with a familiar surname to Formula 1 who set the opening day’s pace. Dane Kevin Magnussen followed in his father Jan’s footsteps by making his F1 test bow for McLaren and the 20-year-old Formula Renault 3.5 driver marked his debut by setting the pace around Yas Marina. His best time, set during the morning before he handed the car over to veteran McLaren tester Gary Paffett, of 1m42.651s was enough More…

If Lewis Hamilton felt that Sebastian Vettel’s had been “lucky” to rescue a third place finish in Abu Dhabi, it was certainly not a word you could apply to the McLaren driver’s own race on Sunday, or indeed his season as a whole. Although Hamilton has been effectively out of the title running for several races now, confirmation that his wait for a second drivers’ title would stretch into a fifth season, and beyond the end of his McLaren career, officially arrived under the lights at Yas Marina the moment his MP4-27 pulled off the road with a fuel pressure More…

Lewis Hamilton has started on the front row of the grid for all of the Abu Dhabi Grands Prix to date and tomorrow he starts from pole position ahead of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, while championship contender Fernando Alonso slipped back to 7th place, a disaster for his hopes of gaining ground on Vettel in the title race. It was Hamilton’s sixth pole of the season and the 25th of his career. He was on swashbuckling form, showing the speed that McLaren are likely to miss next season when he joins Mercedes. Team mate Jenson Button was 6/10ths slower More…

The McLaren Production Centre, situated alongside the McLaren Technology Centre Formula One base in Woking, has received the Judges Special Award at the 25th anniversary of the British Construction Awards, held in London this week. The MPC, which is the base of McLaren Automotive, houses the manufacturing and design processes of the groups high-performance cars, such as the MP4-12C, and has been rewarded with the accolade as it is regarded to be a civil engineering project that is particularly inspirational. Opened in November 2011 at a cost of £800million by the British Prime Minster David Cameron, the site is large More…

A few weeks have passed since it was confirmed that Lewis Hamilton will leave McLaren for Mercedes at the end of the 2012 season. Today Jenson Button admitted that he would be a “big loss”, while Hamilton has addressed the mountain he will have to climb next season with a Mercedes team which has failed to score points in the last three races. “The team loses a very fast driver, a guy that’s achieved a lot with the team, the last guy to win a world championship for the team,” said Button in the Abu Dhabi paddock this afternoon. “It’s More…

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael believes it is possible for the team to take the fight to Red Bull over the remaining races and says nothing changes in the team’s approach to the end of the season despite its championship challenge being effectively over. Since Lewis Hamilton’s gearbox failed while leading in Singapore a month ago Red Bull has not been toppled from the top of the order in either qualifying or the race while in contrast McLaren have suffered a run of reliability problems with both of its cars. That run of results has laid the platform for Red More…

Lewis Hamilton has spoken today of his desire for a fresh challenge in Formula 1 and admitted that he has felt that way “for some time now”. The 27 year old underlined that he relishes the challenge of trying to turn a “struggling” team around, rather than “cruise” in one of the best cars in the field. Hamilton announced his move from McLaren to Mercedes last week and faced the cameras in Suzuka today. Speaking to the BBC, he said, “To stay would be easy, I had two similar offers on the table. To stay in a great car didn’t More…

Martin Whitmarsh spoke today of his feelings on losing Lewis Hamilton, his lack of regrets about the situation and denied that the McLaren’s wings were being protested by Ferrari. He also said that he thinks new recruit Sergio Perez can win his first Grand Prix for McLaren in Melbourne, next March. Speaking in a Vodafone phone in for leading F1 websites, Whitmarsh said that the offer McLaren made to Hamilton exceeded the pay of any F1 driver, “The offer that we made was higher I believe than any driver in Formula 1 is currently receiving or will receive next year, More…

Former McLaren driver turned driver manager Mark Blundell suspects that the “timing is right” for Lewis Hamilton to begin a new chapter in his career with Mercedes and predicts that the move will pave the way for the Briton’s management to take ‘Brand Hamilton’ to a whole new level. Blundell is ideally placed to analyse the switch from both a racing and commercial point of view having driven for McLaren in 1995 and then in more recent time conducted test driver Gary Paffett’s contract negotiations with the team, in addition to the driver’s long-standing relationship with Mercedes in DTM. Speaking More…

[Updated] Lewis Hamilton has cut his 14-year umbilical cord to McLaren and announced he will join Mercedes at the end of the season on a three-year deal. In a huge coup for Mercedes and major shot in the arm for its ambitions of winning consistently in Formula 1 that was predicted by JA on F1 earlier this month, the 2008 world champion will replace Michael Schumacher in the team’s 2013 line-up, reuniting him with his old karting team-mate Nico Rosberg. Sauber’s Sergio Perez will replace Hamilton at McLaren. Intriguingly, however, there was no mention in the Mercedes press release of More…

McLaren sponsor TAG Heuer this weekend honoured the McLaren pit crew which set a new pit stop record this year, changing all four wheels and tyres in 2.31 seconds in Germany. It was the first sub 2.5 second stop ever seen in F1 and to celebrate it, each member of the 22 strong pit stop crew was given a TAG Heuer Carrera watch. “A Formula 1 pitstop is the perfect representation of seamless teamwork. Every movement needs to work in perfect sync for a stop to be a success,” said Jenson Button, who was the lucky recipient of the stop More…

Lewis Hamilton continued McLaren’s recent qualifying dominance, making it four poles from four races for the Woking team and underlining his value to them as he set an untouchable lap to claim pole position in Singapore ahead of Pastor Maldonado and Sebastian Vettel. Following Vettel’s dominance of all free practice sessions Hamilton set the bar at an unbeatable height in the final part of qualifying to claim his 5th pole of 2012 and his 3rd in four races, by almost half a second. It is his 24th career pole position, matching that of Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet and the More…

Sauber’s Sergio Perez spoke this evening about his desire to get into a top team, claiming that he is “ready” to fight for wins and championships. At the same time he said that he had not had any approaches from top teams, despite speculation that McLaren is interested in him, as a possible partner for Jenson Button. “It’s only my second year in Formula One but I feel ready to do a good job with a top team, to fight for the championship. In that respect I feel ready,” said the 22 year old Mexican, who is the third youngest More…

[Updated] Formula 1 sage and former McLaren team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez believes a failure to come to terms with the fact that he had been beaten by team-mate Jenson Button explained Lewis Hamilton’s tweeting of telemetry traces at Spa. Hamilton endured a miserable weekend in Belgium at the start of this month, becoming embroiled in controversy over several messages posted to the social media site – all of which were ultimately taken down. Ramirez, a mainstay at McLaren for 17 years before retiring in 2001, reckons that the telemetry incident highlighted a general reluctance for the current generation of drivers More…

The Italian Grand Prix is shaping up to be a thriller with close times set through the field and the top eight cars separated by 0.25 seconds in a fascinating Free Practice session 2 at Monza. Lewis Hamilton didn’t seem to distracted by being the centre of attention over his possible Mercedes move; he set the fastest time for McLaren ahead of team mate Jenson Button, three hundredths of a second behind. Fernando Alonso set the third fastest time despite a problem ridden day which saw a forced engine change after FP1, a brake problem and a gearbox problem. He More…

Jenson Button’s victory in the Belgian Grand Prix makes him the leading points scorer of the last three races, a reversal of a trend, which began in May, where the British driver and his McLaren team lost their way. The problem Button was suffering from was a lack of performance due to mismatched tyre temperatures between the front and rear tyres and the team was experimenting with various ways of solving that, including heating the tyres from the inside, using heat soak from the brakes. They’ve now found a solution, partly involving aerodynamics to increase rear end grip and aerodynamic More…

Jenson Button drove a faultless race to secure his second victory of 2012 at Spa, as championship leader Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton retired after a nasty first lap pile up. It was triggered by Romain Grosjean, who moved over on Lewis Hamilton and who was launched over Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez causing the retirement of all four cars. It was another in a seres of first lap incidents, which have stretched the patience of the stewards to breaking point. They handed him a one race ban for the Italian Grand Prix, leaving Lotus looking for a substitute driver More…

[Updated] Lewis Hamilton didn’t have a great day on Saturday in Spa. First he went the wrong way on aerodynamic set up, selecting the higher downforce option and ending up well behind team mate Jenson Button, then he got into a twist with his Twitter feed, using the expression “WTF” to highlight his frustration with the decision, before swiftly deleting the tweet and rephrasing it. On Sunday morning he did the same with a photo of his telemetry printout out, compared to Button’s. “Jenson has the new rear wing on, I have the old. We voted to change, didn’t work More…

Jenson Button claimed his first McLaren pole position in dominant fashion today with a spectacular performance in Spa to head an unexpected top three ahead of Kamui Kobayashi and Pastor Maldonado. But hours after the session ended, stewards took Maldonado’s fastest time away for an impeding incident in Q1 on Hulkenberg. It moves Kimi Raikkonen, who was also quizzed by stewards for leaving the circuit boundary with all four wheels, up to third, with Perez fourth. In Button’s 50th Grand Prix for McLaren he set two laps fast enough for pole and finished the session 3/10ths faster than anybody. The More…

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh believes the performance the team showed in the two races immediately prior to the summer break has set it up to have a real crack at both world championship titles over the remainder of the season. The Woking squad had looked in danger of being cut adrift in the battle for the drivers’ championship in particular after disappointing race performances in Valencia and Silverstone but a big upgrade for the German Grand Prix provided a much-needed breakthrough with Jenson Button finishing second there and Lewis Hamilton then winning the following weekend in Hungary. Hamilton is in More…

The Hungarian GP weekend may have prevented Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button from following the opening days of the 2012 Olympics too closely but the British pair ensured they were showing their support for the 541 athletes taking part in the London Games for Team GB by carrying a message of support on their race helmets. Both drivers raced with ‘Go Team GB’ stickers on the top of their crash helmets over the weekend at the Hungaroring, with Hamilton also displaying a message in support of his father Anthony family’s country, Grenada, which has 10 competitors in action at the More…

Lewis Hamilton dominated qualifying in Hungary, setting the pace in all three sessions with two laps fast enough for pole position. His margin over second place was more than four tenths, while he had six tenths in hand over his team mate Button in 4th place. It was Hamilton’s 22nd career pole and the 150th for McLaren. He is joined on the front row by Lotus’ Romain Grosjean in his highest ever starting position after an entertaining session. Sebastian Vettel had to use up sets of soft tyres just to make it into Q3 and his challenge was blunted as More…

Lewis Hamilton will start his 100th Grand Prix on Sunday, but as he revealed in media briefings on the eve of practice, he has mixed feelings about his lack of success in the last few years. Nevertheless, his former team mate Fernando Alonso, who has described himself as being in the form of his life, gave the Englishman a thumbs up, saying that he is the driver he considers his greatest rival. “Why do I talk about Hamilton when McLaren has been in crisis for a few races?” said the Spaniard, “Because he always manages to get something extra from More…

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh is promising the team’s underperforming MP4-27 will feature a number of “quite noticeable” upgrades at Hockenheim this weekend, as the Woking team bids to close back up in the championship battle before the summer break. The team’s general slip in competitiveness relative to traditional main challengers Red Bull and Ferrari, along with the consistently threatening Lotus team, in particular since the opening rounds of the season has been underlined by its failure to record a race finish higher than eighth in the last two races, with its wretched Silverstone result representing the team’s worst two-car finish More…

The McLaren Group has announced a new branch of its company, McLaren Animation. The new venture is aimed at bringing a more accessible front to McLaren as well as stimulating increased brand loyalty; as is apparent in the company’s first production – ‘Tooned’. McLaren Animation has set up an alliance with Oscar-winning animation studio Framestore – whose recent projects have included the film War Horse and the BBC’s Euro 2012 title sequence – to create ‘Tooned’, a new show featuring the voices of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button as themselves as well as Alexander Armstrong, who will voice Professor M. More…

[Updated] The McLaren team may have its problems with competitiveness on the track, having fallen behind Ferrari and Red Bull in the last month, but in the pits the team is now the fastest in F1. The situation is the opposite of the start of the season, where they had the fastest cars, but had plenty of problems in pit stops. At last weekend’s British Grand Prix the team set the two fastest stops of the day in 2.6secs and 2.9secs and all four stops averaged less than 3.0secs. This follows Valencia where they also set the fastest time in More…

[Updated] Despite setting the fastest time this season for a pit stop, with a 2.4 second stop in Valencia, McLaren has had its fair share of problems this season in the pits. And in today’s British Grand Prix they were under pressure again as they were faced the the possibility of having to use a stand in on the right rear corner of the car after the regular mechanic was injured in Valencia during the safety car period stop which went wrong for the team and lost Hamilton track position to Alonso. Apparently the Ferrari chief mechanic who operates the More…

Jenson Button has been managing expectations for fans who will pack the grandstands at Silverstone, as he believes that heavy rains on Friday will restrict track action. Torrential rains are forecast for central England, with risks of flooding. As Silverstone bosses revealed that they have extensive contingency plans in place to deal with the threat of car parks turning into mud holes with heavy rain forecast for Friday, Button says that the drivers will not do many laps in practice “As far as I can see it’s going to rain all weekend. The problem is we are restricted in tyres More…

Sam Michael says McLaren will roll out upgrades expected to be worth more than a tenth of a second per lap at the British Grand Prix this weekend – although doesn’t believe the team has as big a performance gap to make up on Red Bull as the two rivals’ respective Valencia pace suggested. Although Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso ultimately triumphed against the odds last time out in Spain it was Red Bull’s apparent big step forward that proved the most ominous story of the weekend, with Sebastian Vettel qualifying on pole by three tenths of a second and then in More…

Here is the on board lap of the imaginary F1 track around London which was such a talking point yesterday. The launch event last night was an interesting affair; Bernie Ecclestone, predictably, did not show up. It was his intervention with the Times newspaper that turned this from a light hearted PR stunt by Santander UK with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button ahead of the British Grand Prix, which the bank also sponsors, into something of a monster; with TV networks, radio stations and other media clamouring to cover it. Last night’s event went from being a champagne and canapés More…

McLaren heads into the middle phase of the season hopeful it has finally turned a corner with its pit stops and strategy in wake of Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Canada, operations director Simon Roberts has said today. The team’s attempts to capitalise on the MP4-27’s generally strong pace since Jenson Button’s season-opening victory in Australia had been hampered by repeated errors in pit stops in particular but a change to its processes and personnel since Spain have steadily improved the situation, with analysis on this website showing that, while McLaren’s fastest pit stop remained behind those of chief rivals’ Ferrari, More…

One of the most stark stories of recent weeks has been the decline in form of Jenson Button, who won the first race of the season but has now fallen to eighth in the driver’s standings, 43 points adrift of championship leader Lewis Hamilton. With seven different race winners and no-one running away with the championship, it’s by no means a disaster. But the McLaren driver knows he needs to get on top of his set up issues and get back onto the podium as soon as possible to keep himself in contention. The problem, as always in F1, is More…

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about championship leader Lewis Hamilton’s next F1 contract, with his long term deal with McLaren due to expire at the end of this season. Hamilton is now managed by Simon Fuller’s XIX entertainment group and clearly the next contract for Hamilton is an important one, both financially and in terms of his competitiveness. Yesterday McLaren group chairman Ron Dennis shed some light on how they see it, in an interview on Sky, “It’s a complex situation,” said Dennis. “He is on the end of a contract which was signed a More…

Lewis Hamilton became the seventh different winner in seven Grands Prix this season with a cool headed drive on a day of strategy gambles. It was his third Canadian Grand Prix win and the 18th of his career. It gave him the lead in the drivers’ championship by two points over Alonso and three points over Vettel. It was McLaren’s 13th win in Canada. The victory was built on a two stop strategy which proved the right one, although it gave some nervous moments after his second stop, when it became clear that main rivals Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel More…

McLaren’s MP4-27 retains the underlying pace that it showed right at the start of the season, according to the team’s managing director Jonathan Neale, who believes both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will be contention to win this weekend if the team cracks the Pirelli tyre conundrum around the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve. From suggestions that the Woking outfit could dominate the opening phase of the year following a one-three at the Australia season-opener, the team heads into this weekend’s Montreal race looking to bounce back from a series of races when a combination of operational mistakes and disappointing race More…

McLaren’s latest young protégé, Dutchman Nyck de Vries, is to have his progress through the motorsport ranks supported by the team’s sponsor Lucozade. Towards the end of last year McLaren entered into a strategic partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, whose products include the energy and sports drink Lucozade, with the logo of the brand subsequently appearing on the rear wing of this year’s MP4-27 and the firm developing a new drink specifically for the Woking squad’s race drivers and mechanics. It has now been announced that 17-year-old de Vries, the reigning back-to-back world karting champion and who this year has More…

The F1 driver market is starting to move for next season as drivers who are out of contract at the end of the year review their options and start discussions. Unlike football, where there are rules about players being “tapped up” by rival teams without their team’s permission, as well as defined transfer windows, F1 drivers and their agents talk quite a bit and stay in touch with other teams. This constant ebb and flow leads to rumours of driver moves, which turn out to be wrong. The key to the 2013 driver market is whether Michael Schumacher retires at More…

The Monaco Grand Prix’s reputation as the most glamorous stop on the Formula 1 calendar is as long-established as the sport itself and for this year TAG Heuer, sponsor of the blue riband race and the McLaren team, pulled out all the stops in celebration of the race weekend. The centrepiece of TAG’s Monaco events was a branded yacht moored in the port, where the Swiss luxury watchmaker hosted a weekend of events for VIPs and the F1 fraternity. One of these was to announce Lotus’s Swiss-born French driver Romain Grosjean as the company’s newest brand ambassador, along with the More…

Jenson Button set the fastest time in the second free practice session ahead of Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, but much of the afternoon was lost to rain showers, which also threaten the qualifying session on Saturday. Romain Grosjean was second with the two Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso next up. The first session in the morning had shown that the Lotus and the Ferrari look competitive this weekend, with Alonso edging out Grosjean at the top of the time sheets. Grosjean’s Lotus team mate Kimi Raikkonen spent most of the morning in the garage, changing the steering geometry More…

McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh has outlined the reasons why his team should remain very upbeat about its prospects this season, the team principal highlighting several positives amid a succession of missed chances – including what he believes is the advent of a more measured approach to racing from Lewis Hamilton. The Woking-based outfit arrived at the first race of the season having hit its long-held target of having a car capable of winning the first grand prix but since locking out the front row at the second round in Malaysia its race performances have been compromised by a string of team More…

Lewis Hamilton has been speaking today about McLaren’s race performances and the mismatch with their qualifying performances, which has been one of the mysteries of this 2012 season. Hamilton has qualified on the front row five times in five races, although in China he had a gearbox penalty and in Barcelona he was demoted to the back of the grid for a fuel load irregularity. And yet the race pace hasn’t matched up to the qualifying pace and it’s left them chasing the game on Sundays. Of course pit stop errors have played their part in him not achieving better More…

McLaren’s work in implementing green technology at the team’s Woking factory has earned it an Edison Award, which celebrate “innovation and excellence as well as “groundbreaking scientific achievement”. The Edison awards are named after the great American inventor Thomas Edison, who founded invented the light bulb, the record player and many other things as well as founding GE. McLaren has taken a lead in Formula 1 in recent years on improving its carbon efficiency and environmental awareness and having already earned the Carbon Trust Standard over a three-year assessment, achieved annual savings of over 1500 tonnes of CO2 emmissons and More…

Readers of this site will be more than familiar with the work of leading F1 photographer Darren Heath. Last week he launched a stunning new book called “The Art of Racing” in conjunction with McLaren. The 304 page book is a collection of images from the past two seasons, with captions from Maurice Hamilton. Darren is a master not only at capturing speed, but also poignant personality images, as readers of this site will know. His behind the scenes work is very strong and there’s plenty of that on show in this book, which is produced in stunning reproduction, featuring More…

“Formula 1 is all about innovation,” (Ross Brawn, Team Principal Mercedes) There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in F1 at the moment, with the preparation of the new powertrains, which are set to come in under new rules for 2014. These feature small capacity 1.6 litre turbo engines with a high degree of hybrid energy regeneration, stored electrically. There are over 120 sensors on an F1 car and managing the data and control systems is the Electronic Control Unit, which is designed and manufactured for F1 by McLaren Electronic Systems. In Barcelona at the weekend MES and its More…

The McLaren Group has announced that it is to advance its alliance with SAP solutions, a world leader in enterprise application software. The increased collaboration is aimed at improving the group’s productivity and efficiency, as well as integrating the various business centres within the group. SAP software provides an integrated and scalable solution focused on increasing future growth to the IT infrastructure within any size of business, offering the McLaren Group a base with which to process the vast quantities of performance data that they produce. “Our ability to process that data and act on it rapidly is crucial to More…

McLaren is set to run with the higher nose it ran on the MP4-27 right at the end of the Mugello test in Spain this weekend, its team principal Martin Whitmarsh today revealed in a conference call with journalists, with the team also making changes to its pit-stop procedures in wake of the problems of recent races. Having bucked the trend for stepped noses seen elsewhere on the grid in the design of its latest car owing to its predecessor’s higher chassis profile, pictures from the final day of last week’s Mugello test appeared to show the Woking team’s MP4-27 running More…

Lewis Hamilton has spoken of his renewed happiness both on and off the race track after a start to the season which has taken him back to the top of the world championship standings for the first time in nearly two years. The tumultuous nature of Hamilton’s 2011 was well-documented with setbacks in both his racing and his private life contributing to his self-described worst year in Formula 1, but a productive winter allowed him the chance to re-focus and piece back together the ingredients he sees as being key to his personal equilibrium. Speaking to the British media in More…

Lewis Hamilton got to see first hand the hardships faced by street children in Manila this week when he headed straight from the Malaysian Grand Prix to the capital of the Philippines to record a short film for UNICEF. The 2008 F1 world champion met some of the estimated 85,000 children who live and work on the streets in Manila, documenting his experiences in the Binondo area of the city in a film that will air during the celebrity football event Soccer Aid that raises money for children’s charity UNICEF and airs on ITV1 in the UK on May 27. During his two-day trip Hamilton More…

“What I have decided to do this year is just focus on the most important thing and that’s racing,” Lewis Hamilton told the media today at the launch of his 2012 McLaren car. After a 2011 season that was overshadowed by stories of his troubled personal life, Hamilton has hit the reset button over the winter and is ready to do what he does best: take the fight to the other F1 front runners. But its hard to completely shed baggage in this game; at the same time he got a brickbat from his old friend Adrian Sutil who was More…

Lewis Hamilton has done a short interview in La Gazzetta dello Sport today in which he says a couple of interesting things. One is about team mate Jenson Button, the other on Felipe Massa. On Button he says, “Jenson is very fast and has built around himself a very strong team of technicians. I always want to beat him and I’m never happy if I don’t. But psychologically I don’t see it as a problem. He’s an open person who you can get along with. “It would be great to fight with him for the world title in 2012, it More…

The feud which has simmered between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa this season, often flaring into an on track clash, has been put to an end by Hamilton visiting Massa after the race to make up. The Brazilian was finishing off his press briefing at the front of the Ferrari hospitality area when Hamilton approached him and gave him a hug and said a few words. It is not clear whether Hamilton felt moved to make some kind of apology or just a gesture to say that he wanted to put the events behind them. But either way, Massa, who More…

The first day of practice for Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix saw some close lap times between the two leading teams, Red Bull and McLaren, promising a tense battle for the final race of the season. McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the day, just over a tenth clear of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, but the long runs were interesting. The Red Bull was 8/10ths faster than the McLaren, but allowing for the difference in fuel loads, they were close. Red Bull tends to do its long runs using the fuel load it would typically start the second stint More…

Lewis Hamilton looked on good form today in the paddock at Interlagos as he spoke openly about his ups and downs in 2011 and drew the conclusion that although it’s been a painful year, he has grown as a driver and his three wins, including at the last race in Abu Dhabi, were a great satisfaction. He will be going all out for a fourth on Sunday. “It’s been a year of growth, which was one of the most positive things I have learned this year,” he said. “It really has been. What I’ve learned this year I’ll take into More…

Lewis Hamilton won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after a close battle with Fernando Alonso, with Jenson Button in third place. It was Alonso’s 73rd podium and his first trophy from this event, so he now has a complete set of trophies from every track he’s raced on in F1. It was Hamilton’s 17th career victory and his third of this season and although he said he felt “fantastic” he was also pretty humble in his post race statements, saying that one win hadn’t necessarily put him back on track, he felt above all “fortunate not to get into any More…

One of the themes running through the second half of this season has been Lewis Hamilton’s troubled demeanour and the way issues off the track have affected his performances on it. Here in the Yas Marina paddock yesterday Hamilton offered a window in to his troubled soul, confirming many of the things commentators have been saying for months about the effect his private life have had on his professional life. He explains some of how he is feeling. He envies team mate Jenson Button’s protective “bubble” of friends and family and faces the prospect of being beaten by a team More…

It was interesting last night after the Indian Grand Prix to hear McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh suggest that part of the reason for Lewis Hamilton being off form and rather niggly with many people he encounters in F1 at the moment is because he isn’t enjoying being beaten by his team mate, Jenson Button. “Lewis will be feeling under pressure because of the great performances from Jenson at the moment, ” said Whitmarsh. “Lewis, the great, exciting driver that he is, will not like being beaten by Jenson. I don’t want him to enjoy being beaten by his team-mate. I More…

This week I went along to Silverstone to see something I haven’t seen before; a member of the public driving a Formula 1 car. This extraordinary happening was the final stage of the Drive of a Lifetime programme, which is organised by one of McLaren’s sponsors, Johnnie Walker. Thousands of entries from all over the world were narrowed down to 17 finalists, who came to England for a three day experience, which took in some time at McLaren’s HQ in Woking, a day driving fast cars at Jonathan Palmers’s track in Bedford and then a day in single seaters at More…

I’ve got a fantastic competition this weekend for JA on F1 readers around the world; we have four signed Senna movie posters and DVDs of the film, released this week, to give away. All you have to do is predict the time gap between the two McLaren drivers at the finish of Sunday’s Korean Grand Prix and in whose favour. So for example if you think that Jenson Button will finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton by 4 seconds use the comments box below and write “Button by 4 secs”. Or you could predict that one will finish and the other More…

Jenson Button has committed himself to a long term contract at McLaren, ruling out a move any time soon to any of the team’s rivals. McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh describes him as “one of the most capable and respected drivers we’ve ever had.” ‪ Button is in the form of his life at the moment, lying second in the drivers’ world championship, with a chance to become the first F1 team mate to beat Lewis Hamilton in the points standings – he is currently 17 points ahead – and he is thoroughly enjoying his racing. He’s stood on the More…

As predicted by a number of JA on F1 readers, following the news of McLaren’s business development relationship with Glaxo Smith Kline last week, today it has been announced that the team will be henceforth be sponsored by Lucozade, one of GSK’s consumer brands. When asked whether there was a branding side to the deal last week a McLaren spokesman yes that there was but that it wasn’t what the deal was mainly about. It was about McLaren lending expertise to GSK in improving its speed and performance as a business. Lucozade will appear on the car and the drivers’ More…

McLaren has today announced an interesting partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading phamaceuticals companies. The deal is all about McLaren applying know how and technology from years of perfecting the racing game to a corporate environment, such as GSK’s business. It’s something I’ve suggested for some time that F1 could usefully do for the outside world. The sport is all about innovating, adapting, overcoming, planning, reacting quickly, making strategic decisions and building a stable base. Pat Symonds once said that the attitude of the top engineers in F1 should be, “I don’t know how to do that, but More…

The mystery over where outgoing Williams technical director Sam Michael would end up was resolved today when McLaren announced him as their new Sporting Director. The post has been vacant since Dave Ryan stepped down from the job at the Malaysian Grand Prix of 2009. The role of Sporting Director can mean many things in F1. For some teams it is a kind of glorified team manager role, for others it can been more engineering-led. Usually the Sporting Director is the senior person who is required to know the FIA Sporting Regulations rule book inside out and back to front. More…

There is an interesting story from Press Association today with quotes from Lewis Hamilton denying that he has got distracted by his celebrity lifestyle to the detriment of his career in F1. Even his most ardent fans would admit that Hamilton’s performances this season have been uneven, with some very high peaks, such as the German Grand Prix, but also some troughs, where he has collided with other cars and wasted opportunities. Hamilton’s high profile girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger and his friendships with music industry figures like Pharrell Williams and P Diddy have drawn him away from his roots as a More…

It’s now August and although they lead both championships comfortably, Red Bull’s last race victory was in Valencia in June. They have maintained their 100% record in qualifying, but on race day they no longer have the fastest car. In Budapest we saw a reaction with Red Bull mechanics using up one of their four curfew free nights of the season on Friday to work into the small hours on the car to get it right for qualifying and the race. This involved changing the specification of the car from what they had intended to run, with modifications to the More…

On his 200th Grand Prix start and the 5th anniversary of his maiden victory in Hungary, Jenson Button drove a perfectly judged race to take his 11th victory and his second of the season. And it takes him to fourth place in the all time points scorers list behind Schumacher, Alonso and Prost. As in the most recent victory in Canada, it was Sebastian Vettel who followed him home. Once again it was a great outcome for his championship challenge as he extended his lead to 85 points, the largest margin at any point this season. Fernando Alonso finished third More…

We’ve posted quite a bit on F1 and social media in recent months; particularly after the FOTA Fans Forum in Montreal where it was one of the key discussion points and also when I put some of the fans’ questions to Bernie Ecclestone about F1′s reluctance to push content out on social media. Our colleagues at the leading French website Toile F1 have compiled some research on the subject, which is worth sharing and which highlights some interesting trends. The sample was measured this week. The % column refers to the gain in popularity from the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, More…

The German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring featured three drivers in different cars closely matched on performance. As the winner Lewis Hamilton observed, it was all about being perfect and not making mistakes and this was as true of the strategists and the pit crews as it was of the drivers. In the end it came down to some inspired driving and finely balanced strategy calls. But further down the field we saw some varying strategies making a difference to the race result, particularly in the case of Adrian Sutil, who finished sixth ahead of the Mercedes and Renaults. The More…

The German Grand Prix seems to have been a real crowd pleaser because it gave us three of the top F1 drivers all in closely matched cars and it came down to a straight fight on the track. It was driver versus driver and that’s what F1 fans want to see. As with all the best F1 races it is the details that make the difference; for example the tyre warm up up issue on the Ferrari meant that even though Alonso managed to jump Hamilton for the lead at the second stop, he couldn’t resist him in Turn 2 More…

Lewis Hamilton won a tense three way battle for victory in the German Grand Prix, beating Fernando Alonso and the pole sitter Mark Webber. It was Hamilton’s second win of the season and the 16th of his career. It was a great weekend for Hamilton, his result set up by a stunning qualifying lap and a great start, where he took the lead from pole sitter Mark Webber on the run down to Turn 1. And the victory was topped off by his overtake on Alonso after the Spaniard had emerged ahead of him from his second pit stop. “If More…

McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale today said that talk of team principal Martin Whitmarsh being at risk of losing his job is laughable and underlined that the team wants to secure the services not only of Whitmarsh but of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button as well for the long term. It’s been a turbulent period for McLaren, with suggestions that both drivers have made enquiries about opportunities at Red Bull, Lewis Hamilton saying that he’s not willing to do as much sponsor promotional work and then a messy British GP weekend, where Jenson Button’s race was ruined by a pit More…