CHAMPIONS CLUB: How Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri can join an exclusive group of title-winning McLaren drivers

McLaren recently moved to the top of the championship standings for the first time in a decade, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri combining to overcome rivals Red Bull. Will the pair ultimately end a constructors’ title drought stretching back to 1998? Here are the winning driver combinations they are set to join if so…

Emerson Fittipaldi and Denny Hulme

McLaren arrived on the F1 grid back in 1966, with eponymous founder Bruce spearheading the team’s efforts until his tragic death as a result of a Can-Am testing crash at Goodwood Circuit midway through 1970 – but the outfit, and his legacy, would live on.

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Six years after Bruce scored a breakthrough first race win at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, Emerson Fittipaldi and Denny Hulme’s effective driver partnership saw McLaren – running as Marlboro Team Texaco – edge out Ferrari for the 1974 world title.

Fittipaldi and Hulme were the first of McLaren’s championship-winning driver pairings

Fittipaldi enhanced the story by giving McLaren their maiden drivers’ crown – and adding to his 1972 success for Lotus – in the same season, with the Scuderia’s Clay Regazzoni beaten by a similarly tight margin in a championship battle that went down to the wire.

Niki Lauda and Alain Prost

James Hunt claimed another drivers’ title for McLaren in 1976, via rival Niki Lauda’s dreadful crash at the Nordschleife, but it would be a decade before they were constructors’ champions again – after the Austrian came out of retirement and went on to partner Alain Prost.

Indeed, Lauda and Prost combined to win 12 of the 16 races held through 1984, putting McLaren comfortably clear of Ferrari in the standings. Incredibly, just half a point separated the team mates at the end of the season, with Lauda securing a third and final drivers’ title.

McLaren became back-to-back champions for the first time in the mid-1980s with Lauda and Prost

McLaren were pushed harder by Ferrari, Williams and Lotus in 1985 but managed to make it successive double championships. Prost kicked on from that narrow defeat to score most of their points and this time win the individual crown, with Lauda only finishing three races in what would be his farewell year.

Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna

While Williams hit a second patch of title-winning form as the 1980s wore on, McLaren soon came back fighting thanks to the potent coupling of their MP4/4 chassis with Honda power – incumbent Prost and rising star Ayrton Senna the men behind the wheel.

If their 1984 dominance was impressive, McLaren took the meaning to new heights in 1988 when the team won all bar one race and stormed to the constructors’ title, leaving Prost and Senna in a drivers’ battle of their own that went the Brazilian’s way.

It was a fruitful but fractious period as McLaren team mates for Prost and Senna

McLaren doubled up again in 1989, but this time with rapidly rising tensions between their two drivers that peaked when the pair collided at the penultimate round in Japan – Senna’s subsequent disqualification handing Prost the title before the team mates separated.

Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger

With Prost now at Ferrari, it was left to Senna to lead the McLaren charge in 1990 alongside new team mate Gerhard Berger. Both titles again went the way of Ron Dennis’s squad, who got the better of their red rivals in the constructors’ while Senna out-scored Prost after another controversial Suzuka clash.

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McLaren progressed to four successive double championship-winning campaigns with their 1991 crowns, this time overcoming Nigel Mansell and Williams, with that success marking the end of an era and the last constructors’ win until a resurgence in the late-1990s.

Senna and Berger earned McLaren two constructors’ titles across three seasons together

Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard

Agreeing terms with Mercedes after some engine-hopping, signing David Coulthard to partner Mika Hakkinen and adding Adrian Newey to a talented technical department all played their part in McLaren’s next – and to this day most recent – phase as overall champions.

With Newey’s first McLaren hitting the ground running in 1998, Hakkinen and Coulthard came out on top against Ferrari pairing Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine in the constructors’ battle – Hakkinen also winning the drivers’ title over Schumacher.

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Hakkinen would make it two drivers’ titles in two years at the end of a dramatic 1999 season, which featured a leg-breaking crash for Schumacher, but the Scuderia prevented McLaren from taking back-to-back constructors’ crowns by just four points.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri?

Some 16 years on from that ’98 title win, McLaren now find themselves with a golden opportunity to add to their championship haul – Norris and Piastri both becoming Grand Prix winners in 2024 and putting the team 41 points clear of Red Bull with six rounds remaining. Can they see it through to the end? Only time will tell…