We're launching our newest love, the MCL34, on February 14.

Yes, that’s Valentine’s Day for those of you needing a little reminder. And what better opportunity to reflect on some of the team’s greatest love stories than now? 

Bruce and Denny

This was the ultimate Formula 1 bromance. Two no-nonsense Kiwis, who took on and beat the motorsport establishment.

Initially they were rivals when Hulme raced for Brabham in F1, but they were able to maintain a friendship. Bruce even lent Hulme a Morris Minor to get about in when he first touched down in England.

In 1968 the inevitable happened: Hulme joined McLaren as the reigning world champion, at a time when the team had yet to win a race. He was right to have faith in his friend’s fledgling operation because Bruce won the team’s first grand prix at Spa, with Denny winning again in Italy and Canada.

But they were no one-trick ponies. The Kiwi dream-team also dominated Can-Am in America, which became known as the ‘Bruce and Denny show’. The team won five consecutive Can-Am titles.

Sadly, it was in one of these Can-Am cars that the good times came to an abrupt end. While testing an M8D at Goodwood, Bruce lost his life. The team lost its leader and Denny lost his best mate.

Upon hearing of Bruce’s accident, Denny wanted to retire immediately. But his loyalty to Bruce and to the team took precedence and he continued to lead the team for another four seasons. There were more victories, but the craic was never the same.

McLaren and Papaya

Roses are red, violets are blue… and McLarens are papaya orange.

Not all love stories have a conventional beginning and papaya wasn’t the colour of choice for McLaren’s early cars. At Monaco in ’66, when the team made its F1 debut, its cars were in fact white and green - at the request of Hollywood movie director John Frankenheimer, who was filming ‘Grand Prix’.

Only in 1967 did McLaren first adopt papaya orange on its Can-Am cars. The colour was suggested by Teddy Mayer, one of McLaren’s architects, who reckoned it would look distinctive on TV. Bruce McLaren agreed and the team adopted the papaya hue in F1 the following season.

The papaya colours enjoyed much success in F1, Can-Am and at the Indy 500, and it was only the advent of commercial sponsorship that squeezed out the orange. It was last seen in F1 in 1974.

However, papaya would make a spectacular return decades later. It became the F1 winter testing livery ahead of the 1997, ’98 and ’06 seasons, and then made a full-time return in both F1 and Indy in 2017.

Senna and Prost

This was more of an infatuation than a classic love story. Ayrton and Alain became obsessed with each other’s speed, dedication and daring. It took them to new heights of performance and it created one of the biggest talking points in the history of F1.

The honeymoon went well. The McLaren MP4/4 was -the- dominant car of ’88 and the pair won 15 of the year’s 16 races - eight for Senna, seven for Prost. They even kept a lid on their rivalry, which saw numerous dices for the lead and a sublime qualifying lap by Senna at Monaco. Prost even asked mid-season whether it would be possible for them to finish equal first in the championship.

That was as cordial and conciliatory as their relationship got.

A misunderstanding at the start of the 1989 San Marino Grand Prix brought about a dramatic cooling of relations that had frozen over by season’s end. The championship was decided by a controversial collision in Japan and Prost left the team at the end of the year.

Was the marriage always destined to fail? Perhaps. Such was the intensity of the fight and the lack of opposition. But it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all - and we the fans were the main benefactors.

MP4/4 and 1988

We love cars. Everything about them, from the design to the build to going racing. But will there ever be a more loved (and successful) F1 car than the McLaren MP4/4? It won 15 out of 16 races in 1988 and set a new benchmark in terms of performance.

The brainchild of Gordon Murray and Steve Nichols, the car was immediately competitive. In the hands of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost it was 1.5s faster than its rivals during pre-season testing and the opposition never closed the gap. The car’s 1.5-litre V6 Honda turbo pumped out more than 700bhp and its aerodynamics were a huge improvement over the previous season - as much as 15 percent better, according to Murray.

The result? Domination of the kind never previously seen in F1. The car scored three times as many world championship points as its nearest challenger and it would probably have achieved a clean-sweep of race wins had Senna not been taken out of the lead by a backmarker at Monza.

That was a car that all at McLaren really loved.

John Barnard and carbon fibre

This was a tale of intimacy and ambition. McLaren tech boss John Barnard spent 18 months working obsessively on F1’s first carbon fibre monocoque and such was its success that the material was quickly adopted by the entire grid.

Prior to 1981, F1 cars were made of aluminium. It was light and malleable, but it lacked torsional rigidity. Enter carbon fibre, which had the same weight-saving qualities, but was much stiffer.

Back then carbon wasn’t used as ubiquitously as it is today and Barnard was forced to work with Hercules, based in Salt Lake City, to build the MP4/1 chassis. The results were immediate: the car was 2.5 times stiffer than its aluminium predecessor, yet it weighed the same.

The car became increasingly competitive. In the hands of John Watson it finished third in Spain, second in France and won brilliantly at the British Grand Prix. It was the first ever victory for a carbon fibre chassis.

The safety of Barnard’s design was proved later that year when Watson escaped unscathed from a huge accident at the Italian Grand Prix. What’s there not to love about that?

McLaren and youth

Ahh, the beauty of youth. With a combined age of 43, Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris have become our youngest-ever driver line-up. But young guns are nothing new to McLaren.

Our founder, Bruce McLaren, became F1’s youngest-ever winner when he took the spoils at the 1959 US Grand Prix. He was 22 years and 104 days - a record that would stand until the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix.

In fact, what is it about the age of 22? Future world champion Jody Scheckter was 22 when he made his F1 debut with McLaren; Kimi Räikkönen replaced Mika Häkkinen in the team at just 22 and Lewis Hamilton made his debut in 2007 at 22, having first been signed to McLaren’s junior programme at the tender age of 13.

Puppy love; you can’t beat it.

Of course, we have to give honourable mentions to Gilles Villeneuve and James Hunt, whose friendship led to Gilles joining the team for the 1977 British GP. And we can't forget Prost and Niki Lauda, who were team mates in the truest sense. And finally Senna and Gerhard Berger, with stories of Berger's infamous pranks on Ayrton still being told in the F1 paddock to this day. 

Visit TEAMStream on Valentine's Day 2019 to discover our all-new challenger, the MCL34, as it's revealed to the world.