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Will Stevens

Test and Simulator Driver

Born 28/06/1991, Rochford, England
Nationality British

Will Stevens is McLaren’s longest-serving Test and Simulator Driver, a key player among the team’s armoury of F1 experts.  

Having begun his motorsport career in karts in 2003, Rochford racer Will Stevens made the step up to cars with a brief Formula Renault foray in 2008 on the back of European and Asia-Pacific karting titles. He returned to Formula Renault for a full campaign in 2009 and spent three seasons at that level: scoring wins in the UK and Eurocup championships and finishing fourth in the final standings of the latter in 2011. 

In 2012, Will moved on to Formula Renault 3.5 and during his second season in the series went toe-to-toe with former McLaren F1 drivers Carlos Sainz, Kevin Magnussen and Stoffel Vandoorne. Will ended the campaign in fourth with five podiums to his name and went on to record a brace of wins in the series in 2014. In the same year, he made his F1 debut at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with Caterham and he acquitted himself well during a full season in F1 with Manor Marussia in 2015. 

A move to sports car racing in 2016 proved highly successful, as Will showed that he was not only adept behind the wheel of a single-seater. He is a race winner in the World Endurance Championship (WEC), European Le Mans Series, and the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup, including two historic triumphs in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the first in 2017 in the GTAM class, and the second in the LMP2 class in 2022. That same season, Will’s team, Jota, claimed overall honours in WEC’s LMP2 class.  

A consistent presence at the McLaren Technology Centre, Will splits his time between debriefing rooms and the simulator, working on car development and race weekend setup. He plays a pivotal role behind the scenes in our pursuit of performance, providing invaluable technical understanding while being ingrained in McLaren Racing’s ethos and mentality from his years with the team. He is also a contributor to our Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) programme, which puts him at the wheel of older McLaren cars at private tests.