
Frenemies: When your rivals become your heroes - presented by Medallia
If you can't beat them, sign them

In years to come, ‘Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’ is going to be the answer to a pub quiz question that starts: which is the only McLaren driver pairing in which both drivers have made their debut with McLaren?
Fifty-two drivers have raced for the team in F1, and across the decades, experience rather than youth has tended to dominate the line-up – though only six of our drivers have come to the team with Drivers’ World Championship-winning pedigree.
In most cases, they’ve spent the previous few years scrapping it out against the McLaren cars for wins. Capturing that sort of signature brings with it a lot of experience and knowledge – but also removes a thorn from the team’s side. Sometimes it’s worked out well, sometimes extremely well… sometimes, less so. You can probably guess which is which.
In celebration of our 60th anniversary year, and presented by Medallia, we’re looking back at rival drivers who beat us to a World Championship, only to later join our team.

Denny Hulme wins the 1968 Italian Grand Prix in the McLaren M7A-Ford
Denny Hulme
Brabham: 1965–67
McLaren: 1968-74
McLaren’s first two years in Formula 1 were as a single-car entry. There were customer cars, and other drivers in non-championship races, but in the F1 World Championship, Bruce McLaren competed as a lone gun. It wasn’t until 1968 that McLaren expanded to a two-car F1 line-up, and the driver joining Bruce was reigning World Champion Denny Hulme. Hulme would spend the next six years with the team, contesting 87 World Championship grands prix, winning six, taking 15 other podium finishes.
The landscape of motorsport and the driver market was a great deal more fluid in the 1960s than it is today, and Denny’s move to McLaren illustrates the case perfectly. Amon had driven alongside Bruce in Can-Am for McLaren in 1966 and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with him for the Shelby American team. That caught the eye of Enzo Ferrari, and Amon moved to Maranello for 1967.
Hulme joined McLaren for Can-Am in 1967, while competing against McLaren in F1 for Brabham. In 1968, he started the F1 season with McLaren, drove a Brabham in the Tasman Series, and a McLaren in Can-Am. Denny took our first podium, second at the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, and two victories that season, but crucially, he later played a big part in keeping the team together after the untimely death of Bruce.
His last win came in Argentina, at the start of the 1974 season, before he retired at the end of the year. His last act in F1 saw McLaren take a first Constructors’ title, while his quick, young teammate became the McLaren’s first Drivers’ Champion.

Emerson Fittipaldi with Teddy Mayer alongside his McLaren M23 Ford at the 1975 Italian GP
Emerson Fittipaldi
Lotus: 1970-73
McLaren: 1974-75
It was a major coup for the still-young McLaren team to have Emerson Fittipaldi join for 1974. The young Brazilian won the 1972 Drivers’ Championship for Lotus but was beaten by Jackie Stewart in 1973. Discontented with reliability at Lotus in ’73, and following a falling out with Colin Chapman over team orders (or lack thereof) at Monza, Emmo was shopping around for a new team.
He was courted by many and had discussions with three: Tyrrell wanted him as a replacement for the retiring Stewart and Bernie Ecclestone had long been an admirer and wanted him at Brabham. Emmo, however, had been greatly impressed with the McLaren M23. Things had clicked when he met McLaren’s management, and that was that. He took his second Drivers’ Championship and our first in his debut year with the team, winning his home race in Brazil along the way.
Two more wins followed in 1975 but Emmo was well-beaten into second place by Ferrari’s Niki Lauda. He departed at the end of 1975 to drive for the Fittipaldi team, founded by Wilson Fittipaldi, his brother. These days, with another generation of Fittipaldis in the F1 paddock, Emmo is a regular presence on race day in the back of our garage.

Niki Lauda in the cockpit of the McLaren MP4-2 TAG at the 1984 Austrian GP
Niki Lauda
Brabham: 1978-79
McLaren: 1982-85
Niki Lauda has to be the driver to best represent the duality of being both a McLaren hero and the team’s nemesis. During his Ferrari pomp, he beat Emmo to the 1975 title, and while James Hunt won the Drivers’ Championship in ’76, Ferrari pipped us to the Constructors’ title.
When Lauda retired in 1979 after two unhappy years at Brabham, that should have been that. Lauda went off to run his airline and Formula 1 moved on… except for Ron Dennis, who really wanted the Austrian to rethink his decision and come back to the circus. Ron kept calling, Niki kept saying ‘no’… until he didn’t. It was, of all things, a commentary stint at the Austrian Grand Prix that rekindled Niki’s enthusiasm for the sport, and so, in 1982, he returned to the cockpit with McLaren.
It all came good in 1984, when five wins propelled him to a third Driver’s World Championship, and McLaren to a second Constructors’ Championship. The team won a third in 1985 – but Lauda called it a day at the end of that season. Experience had triumphed over speed in ’84, when Niki beat his young teammate Alain Prost – but Prost was nothing if not a fast learner. Niki knew it was time to hang up the helmet – but he was undoubtedly one of the architects of the McLaren team that went on to dominate in the years that followed.

Nigel Mansell on the McLaren pit-wall at the 1995 San Marino GP
Nigel Mansell
Williams: 1991-92
McLaren: 1995
If coaxing Niki Lauda out of retirement had been a triumph for McLaren then the full-time return to the grid of Nigel Mansell a decade later was… not a triumph.
Mansell had spent the late 1980s and early 1990s as McLaren’s primary opposition. Alain Prost beat him to the Drivers’ World Championship in 1986, although his Williams team took the Constructors’ Championship. In 1991, Mansell and Williams ran Ayrton Senna and McLaren very close in both Championships, and then the following year, it was Williams all the way in the Constructors' Championship, while Mansell won the Drivers’ Championship.
Disagreements between driver and team led to Mansell departing F1 at the end of year to race in the CART IndyCar World Series – which he promptly won. Mansell returned to F1 on a part-time basis in 1994 and then returned on a full-time basis in 1995 with McLaren. However, he initially struggled to drive the slender MP4/10, which didn’t have the sort of elbow room his famously physical driving style required. He missed the first two races of the season, with Mark Blundell deputising, while a roomier MP4/10B was constructed.
Having been a perennial thorn in McLaren’s side for much of the previous decade, Mansell finally made his McLaren debut at Imola and finished 10th after a collision with Eddie Irvine, in what turned out to be his last F1 finish. He was forced to retire in the following race, and with no genuine prospect of the car becoming competitive, Mansell called it a day at that point, and was replaced by Blundell.

McLaren teammates Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso celebrate a 1-2 on the podium at the United States GP
Fernando Alonso
Renault: 2006
McLaren: 2007
Ferrari: 2010-14
McLaren: 2015-2018
Fernando Alonso’s arrival in Woking for 2007 is up there with the biggest driver moves of the 21st Century. Renault won back-to-back double titles with the young Spaniard, the first of which came after a titanic battle with McLaren that saw our pairing of Kimi Räikkönen and Juan Pablo Montoya win more races than the Renaults of Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella – but fall just short in both championships.
Wresting Alonso away from Enstone was a coup, and initially a triumph, as he won two of the first five races… but if Alonso was an unstoppable force, then in rookie Lewis Hamilton, he met an immovable object. Things became tense in the garage as the pair vied for supremacy.
They ended the season honours-even on 109 points each – one behind World Champion and Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen, and Fernando moved back to Renault. At that point in time, Fernando coming back to McLaren looked about as likely as an Oasis reunion, but the 'Supersonic' Spaniard returned in 2015 to spearhead our new partnership with Honda.
Alonso stayed for four turbulent years, in which he was an absolutely rock-solid constant, giving it 100% every week and delivering mesmeric performances in cars that, sadly, weren’t capable of providing the trophies his efforts and talent deserved.

Jenson Button celebrating a win at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix
Jenson Button
Brawn: 2009
McLaren: 2010-17
The final driver to join McLaren with a World Champion’s trophy listed in their palmarès is Jenson Alexander Lyons Button. Button joined McLaren off the back of a Championship-winning season with Brawn GP, citing a desire to race alongside and against Lewis.
His three years as Hamilton’s team-mate certainly burnished his reputation: while the pair had very different driving styles, there was rarely much between them, and Button narrowly outscored Hamilton across their partnership. It also bought Button eight of his 15 grand prix victories.
He drove for McLaren for a further four seasons, retiring at the end of 2016… only to make a one-off return at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix, subbing for Fernando Alonso when Fernando was driving in the Indy 500. If you’re wondering if it felt weird having him racing from the ‘wrong’ side of the garage, with Fernando’s car and crew… it did.
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