Bruce McLaren’s firm made its F1 world championship debut in 1966 and the New Zealander scored its maiden victory in the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix. Since then, 19 other drivers have taken wins for McLaren and seven have won drivers’ titles.
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For the selection of the top 10 McLaren F1 drivers, Autosport has considered the amount of success the drivers scored with the team, the impact they had on McLaren and the circumstances of their time there. We didn’t include their records elsewhere.
If you’d also like to see which McLaren F1 cars we thought were best, take a look here.
10. David Coulthard
McLaren years: 1996-2004
McLaren starts: 150
McLaren wins: 12
McLaren titles: 0
A hard-working team player, Coulthard is the longest serving McLaren driver and is fifth on the team’s all-time wins list. He finished third in the drivers’ championship three times with McLaren and was runner-up in 2001.
Coulthard joined from Williams for 1996 and formed a strong line-up with Mika Hakkinen. The Finn scored more points in 1996, while DC finished ahead the following year. More importantly, the Briton took McLaren’s first wins in more than three years when he triumphed at Melbourne and Monza.
New rules and the MP4-13 leapfrogged McLaren to the front of the F1 grid in 1998. Hakkinen rose to the opportunity best, beating Michael Schumacher to the crown as Coulthard scored just one victory, though he helped McLaren to take the constructors’ title ahead of a resurgent Ferrari.
It was a similar story in 1999, despite Schumacher breaking his leg at Silverstone and missing six races. Various McLaren calamities, including Coulthard nudging Hakkinen into a spin in Austria, helped Eddie Irvine run Hakkinen close for the title and Ferrari snatched the constructors’ laurels despite the obvious pace of the MP4-14. DC had dropped out of contention with an off in tricky conditions in the European GP while leading.
Coulthard took a career-best three wins in 2000 to finish third in the standings again, while Schumacher finally ended Ferrari’s long wait for the drivers’ crown by beating Hakkinen. Coulthard’s defeat of both at Magny-Cours showed that he could take on the best, but he struggled to do it often enough.
Race of My Life: David Coulthard on the 2000 French GP
The 2001 campaign was perhaps Coulthard’s best. He gained ascendancy over Hakkinen and scored 10 podiums but a string of problems, including a launch control glitch that cost him Monaco GP pole, meant he finished well behind a dominant Schumacher in the final table.
Ferrari and Williams were ahead of McLaren in 2002. Coulthard outscored rising star team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and took one of his finest wins at Monaco, but the momentum swung away from him in 2003.
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Coulthard was unlucky in both Malaysia and Brazil early in the campaign and it was Raikkonen who challenged Schumacher. After nine years with McLaren, Coulthard was replaced by Williams ace Juan Pablo Montoya at season’s end, a move that made sense at the time but seems less brilliant in hindsight. Instead, Coulthard joined the new Red Bull team for 2005.
9. Jenson Button
McLaren years: 2010-16, 2017 (one-off)
McLaren starts: 136
McLaren wins: 8
McLaren titles: 0
Jenson Button or his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso could have made this list. Alonso had two stints at the team, came closer to winning a title and it’s easy to argue he managed more with poor McLaren machinery than anyone else. But he was also disruptive, while Button helped bring harmony during his time alongside Lewis Hamilton.
Joining Hamilton for 2010, after winning the world title with Brawn, raised eyebrows, but Button held his own. He won as early as round two in Australia and was often able to match Hamilton in the races, if not qualifying.
Over their three seasons together Button scored more points, though Hamilton took more wins. Perhaps Button’s finest season was 2011, when he won three races and was a brilliant runner-up in the drivers’ championship, while Hamilton languished in fifth.
PLUS: Button’s 10 best F1 drives ranked
Hamilton’s departure to Mercedes for 2013 coincided with a downturn for McLaren. Button outscored new team-mate Sergio Perez, who created some tension on-track, but was only ninth in the championship and had already taken his final F1 win.
Button continued to perform even as the new McLaren-Honda partnership floundered, finishing five points ahead of team-mate Alonso in 2015. Alonso had the upper hand in 2016 and Button bowed out of F1 at the end of the year, aside from a one-off at Monaco the following season subbing for the Indianapolis 500-contesting Alonso.
8. Kimi Raikkonen
McLaren years: 2002-06
McLaren starts: 87
McLaren wins: 9
McLaren titles: 0
Raikkonen won his F1 title with Ferrari but he was probably at his peak during his earlier stint at McLaren.
The young Finn joined McLaren in 2002, following a promising F1 rookie campaign at Sauber. He was outscored by experienced team-mate Coulthard in his first year at Woking but was one of the stars of the following season.
Armed with the revised MP4-17D after the radical MP4-18 was canned, Raikkonen scored consistently. Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher (six wins) and Williams driver Montoya (two) took more victories but eight podium finishes to go with his maiden F1 success meant Raikkonen went to the Suzuka finale with a chance of the crown.
Schumacher put in a scrappy drive to eighth while his team-mate Rubens Barrichello took victory, restricting Raikkonen – who needed to win with Schuey failing to score – to second.
Ferrari was unstoppable in 2004 and McLaren took a step backwards, but Raikkonen still scored a brilliant victory over Schumacher at Spa despite a gearbox glitch.
Top 10: Kimi Raikkonen’s greatest F1 drives ranked
Rule changes and the single-set-of-tyres-per-race rule threw Ferrari off its stride in 2005. The Raikkonen-MP4-20 combination was the fastest of the season, but unreliability hurt in his fight with Alonso, who put in a brilliant campaign to take the crown with Renault.
McLaren was less competitive in 2006 and, with Alonso signed early for 2007, Raikkonen joined Ferrari and replaced Schumacher. He would go on to beat McLaren drivers Alonso and Hamilton to the title by a single point in his first Ferrari season…
7. Emerson Fittipaldi
McLaren years: 1974-75
McLaren starts: 28
McLaren wins: 5
McLaren titles: 1 (1974)
Already a world champion with Lotus, Fittipaldi’s shock move to McLaren for 1974 proved a masterstroke. The Teddy Mayer-run team already had a title-contending car in Gordon Coppuck Source: Autosport