The first half of the 2025 season has seen McLaren not only carry forward their championship-winning form from last year but build on it even further, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri leading a seemingly two-horse race for the title whilst also giving the squad a huge lead in the Teams’ Standings.
Both Norris and Piastri have earned praise for their commanding performances along the way, making them a driver pairing that looks set to follow in the footsteps of other impressive duos to have raced for the Woking-based outfit over the years. As such, we’ve been taking a look back at eight of McLaren’s strongest line-ups from seasons gone by…
Niki Lauda and Alain Prost
Should Norris and Piastri seal the Teams’ Championship for McLaren this season, they will be emulating the achievements of Niki Lauda and Alain Prost, the first drivers to take back-to-back titles for the squad back in the 1980s.
Prost had won a number of races with Renault when he arrived at McLaren in 1984 to partner the then two-time World Champion Lauda. It was Prost who triumphed at the season-opening race in Brazil, kicking off a campaign that would see the outfit claim victory in 12 out of 16 Grands Prix.
While Prost won on seven occasions in comparison to Lauda’s five, the latter ultimately took the title by just half a point from his team mate. But the French driver did not have to wait long to achieve the feat himself, beating Lauda to the championship in 1985 before the Austrian walked away from the sport at the end of the season.
Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard
One pairing who just missed out on claiming consecutive Teams’ titles – despite succeeding in the Drivers’ Championship – were Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, who raced alongside each other at McLaren between 1996 and 2001.
During those six years, the partnership scored 30 wins between them including 13 1-2 finishes, as well as 33 pole positions. However, while the duo were a strong force, it was Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher who ultimately became Hakkinen’s main opponent for the title in 1998.
The Finn triumphed, taking both championships that season, while he went on to narrowly beat the Scuderia’s Eddie Irvine to a second Drivers’ crown in 1999. Though Hakkinen and Coulthard did not bring home another title in the years that followed – as Ferrari’s period of dominance started to take hold – they ensured that McLaren remained the Italian outfit’s closest challenger.
Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya
After Hakkinen opted to leave Formula 1 at the end of 2001, another ‘flying Finn’ joined the team in the form of Kimi Raikkonen. But with McLaren struggling in comparison to the high-flying Ferrari – dropping back to fifth place in 2004 – title success again eluded the squad.
However, amid the introduction of new technical regulations, the team looked to be in resurgent form in 2005, a season in which they also welcomed race winner Juan Pablo Montoya as Raikkonen’s team mate following Coulthard’s switch to Red Bull.
The pair notched up 10 victories between them, two more than rivals Renault in a championship fight that saw them only just lose out to the French manufacturer. Things proved more challenging in 2006, a year in which Montoya exited midway through the campaign while Raikkonen went on to sign with Ferrari for 2007 – more on which in the next entry…
Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton
Following the end of the Raikkonen and Montoya era, McLaren made a bold move for 2007, recruiting reigning World Champion Fernando Alonso from Renault to be paired with a rookie by the name of Lewis Hamilton.
What came next was a memorable season in which both drivers fought for the World Championship alongside the Ferrari of Raikkonen, with an increasingly tense intra-team rivalry brewing along the way at the Woking-based outfit.
Alonso and Hamilton both lost out on the title to Raikkonen by one point and the partnership between them came to an end after just one season, with Alonso making an early exit from the team to rejoin Renault for 2008 – a year in which Hamilton would become a champion for the first time.
Emerson Fittipaldi and Denny Hulme
In terms of delivering championship success, the pairing of Emerson Fittipaldi and Denny Hulme – both proven World Champions – was an inspired move for McLaren in 1974.
Hulme opened the campaign with victory in Argentina – a win that would ultimately to be his last in Formula 1 – while Fittipaldi triumphed in front of his home crowd at the next event in Brazil. After standing on the top step twice more that year, Fittipaldi became a champion for the second time.
It was a first for McLaren, however, and the Brazilian racer’s partnership with Hulme also brought home the squad’s debut Teams’ Championship. The outfit have gone on to clinch a total of nine in the time since, with their longest consecutive run of titles being kicked off by perhaps their most famous line-up…
Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna
Prost’s second appearance in this list is of course alongside Ayrton Senna, a line-up that became perhaps the team’s most famous. Following the exit of Lauda, Prost was partnered with Keke Rosberg and Stefan Johansson in 1986 and 1987 respectively before McLaren brought in rising star Senna for 1988.
The combination of Prost – by that stage a two-time champion – alongside the proven race winner Senna and the remarkable MP4/4 car led to a dominant campaign for the squad, with McLaren taking victory in all but one race while Senna beat his team mate to the title by just three points.
Tensions between the two drivers boiled over in 1989, culminating in a controversial collision in Japan that saw Prost seal a third championship. The Frenchman departed for Ferrari at the end of the campaign but the rivalry remained, while McLaren backed up the two Teams’ titles won by Senna and Prost with another two in 1990 and 1991, marking their most successful championship-winning streak.
Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button
Another driver to make a repeat appearance in this rundown is Hamilton. Following two seasons racing alongside Heikki Kovalainen after Alonso’s departure, the Briton welcomed a new team mate in 2010 in the form of Jenson Button.
With Button having just won the World Championship for Brawn GP, the all-star line-up paired the two most recent Drivers’ title winners together and, during the three years that followed, the duo brought home a total of 19 victories for McLaren.
Title success ultimately eluded the team during this era, with Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull embarking on a run of consecutive championships. Hamilton started a new chapter with Mercedes in 2013, while Button remained with the squad and later went on to pair with another champion – a returning Alonso – in 2015 and 2016.
Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz
Unfortunately for Alonso, his comeback to McLaren coincided with one of the toughest phases in the team’s history. A seemingly romantic reunion with Honda in 2015 – the squad’s engine partner during the Prost/Senna years – quickly turned sour, leading to some challenging seasons for the outfit.
Following signs of progress amid a switch to Renault, the team went on to welcome a brand-new driver line-up in 2019 when Carlos Sainz joined with rookie Lando Norris. The duo’s amiable relationship off the track made them a hit with fans, while their form on the circuit started to reap results.
After a P6 finish for McLaren in 2018, Sainz and Norris helped to elevate them to P4 one year on before going one step better to finish third in 2020, marking the squad’s most successful championship placing in 10 years. And while the professional partnership ended when Sainz moved to Ferrari for 2021, the ‘Carlando’ bromance appears to live on.
