The first name on the list didn’t really join the team. He was the team. Having won three grands prix with Cooper, the first of which – the 1959 US Grand Prix – saw him hold the record as F1’s youngest race winner until 2003, Bruce bit the bullet in 1966 and started running and racing his own F1 cars. The first few years were hard, but everything clicked in 1968 with the arrival of the M7A and the mighty Cosworth DFV. Bruce won the fourth race of the season by a healthy 12 seconds from the BRM of Pedro Rodríguez. McLaren was off and running. 

While Bruce, appropriately took the team’s first win, fellow Kiwi and reigning world champion Denny Hulme joined in 1968 and had the stronger season. He finished third in the championship thanks to a brace of victories towards the back-end of the year, the first of which – like Daniel’s – came at Monza. The Italian Grand Prix was a longer race back then; 68 laps covering 391km gave Denny the opportunity to build up rather more of a lead at the line than Daniel enjoyed, winning by one minute and 28 seconds. 

We had a lucky charm in the garage at the weekend in the shape of Emerson Fittipaldi. After joining the team in 1974, Emmo won the second race of the season: his home grand prix at Interlagos. While held on the much longer old layout, the race had all the chaos associated with the modern iteration. The start was delayed so that glass could be swept off the track – deposited there by over-exuberant fans celebrating Emmo’s pole. The actual race start wasn’t smooth with some drivers missing the flag and, to compound matters, there was an Interlagos-style cloudburst 31 laps into the scheduled 40. Deemed too dangerous to continue, the race was red-flagged on lap 32, and Emmo was on his way to winning his second and McLaren’s first title. 

The events of 1976 are better documented than most seasons, but Hunt put his first tick in the McLaren victory column at Jarama… eventually. Hunt won the Spanish Grand Prix, only for his car to be disqualified post-race for being 15mm too wide. The victory was given to Niki Lauda, McLaren appealed, and Hunt was reinstated – but the appeal was heard in July shortly after Hunt had won the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, so which one is ‘first’ is a matter of opinion. 

Like Emmo, Watty opened his McLaren account with victory at his home grand prix. The Ulsterman had taken Penske’s one and only F1 win at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix but enjoyed no further visits to the top step until his third year at McLaren when driving the MP4. Watson’s win was, significantly, the first for a carbon monocoque car. He first had to make his way through a multi-car pile-up at Woodcote and then through a track invasion of delighted Silverstone fans while heading to the podium on a flatbed truck. 

From time to time, sports stars decide they retired too early and attempt a comeback. Rarely are they successful – and those that are, are rarely as successful as Niki Lauda. Having retired in 1979, Niki, while running his airline, rediscovered his mojo in the commentary box. He made his return in 1982 and took his 18th F1 victory, and his first of eight for McLaren, at the third round of the season on the streets of Long Beach. 

Senna was very much the driver to watch before he joined McLaren, with a string of great performances for Lotus across the previous three seasons, including six victories. He got off to a flier in his first McLaren race, taking pole position at the Brazilian Grand Prix, only for a gearbox problem to prevent him from taking the start. He jumped into the spare car but was black-flagged for doing so after the green flag had been shown. The next time out, at Imola, he suffered no such bad luck, taking a comfortable pole and a comfortable victory. Ayrton was on his way to winning his first Drivers’ Championship. 

If you want to look for parallels to Daniel Ricciardo’s 2021 season, look no further than Juan Pablo’s travails in 2005. Monty found the MP4/20 a tricky beast to master. Indeed, after his first run in the car while testing in Spain he believed it to be broken, so different was it to the Williams he had been winning in a few weeks earlier (testing started early back in the day). The first half of the season was tough, but Juan Pablo and the team worked hard. The car was gradually adapted to something he felt comfortable driving, and he won three of the final nine races of the season, starting with the British Grand Prix, where he came out on top in a head-to-head thriller against Fernando Alonso.

Jenson Button brought the coveted no.1 to McLaren for 2010 and put a tick in the win column at his second race. Conditions were perfect for Jenson: light rain giving way to a drying track shortly after the start, on which Jenson, who’d had a rocky first few laps, took the plunge and swapped to slicks early. It paid off and he rose to P2, then inherited the lead when Sebastian Vettel retired with a brake problem. It was the first of eight wins for Jenson over the next three seasons, the last of which came at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix which was McLaren’s most recent until…

The word of the weekend that culminated in Daniel’s eighth F1 victory was ‘progression’. The sprint qualifying format suited Daniel, seeing him improve steadily, with every session building on the last. A good start from P5 in the F1 Sprint saw him move up to P3, which became P2 for the race start. Another good start had him take the lead, soak up the initial pressure from Max Verstappen, manage the critical pit-window well and make a crucial overtake on Carlos Sainz to maintain his gap to Verstappen. While much of the aftermath from an exceptional Italian Grand Prix was taken up with discussion of the clash between the championship protagonists, Verstappen and Hamilton, it’s worth noting that their battle took place a long way behind Daniel…