McLaren Formula 1 Car by Car: Every Race Car Since 1966

Great book with amazing imagery. Good collection of pictures, tech, spec and stat data information for each car and year. Perfect book. Goes right alongside my Hakkinen collection. Happy with my purchase

This was a gift for my nephew and he absolutely loved it! For a formula 1 fan, this was a treasure of information about the race car teams history.

Excellent book with superb photography. A must but for F1 heads.

Informative and filled with lots of nice pictures. A great resource for fans.

He is getting it for Christmas as he and his dad follow Formula 1 and have chosen McLaren as their team

Everyone who is F1 race fan need to read this book.Pictures ae FANTASTIC, good.

I have had this book for almost six months, but I review it only now because in the interim I provided it in turn to three friends who are dyed-in-the-wool Formula 1 fans. Their conversation at work is peppered with the records of favorite drivers, comparisons of the technological states of teams, and – inseparable from F1 – the “politics” of personnel, rulemaking, penalties, and sponsorships.For the record, we four are engineers, and we work for an airplane manufacturer. We deal in structural integrity, structural dynamics, aerodynamics, and – yes –rulemaking and compliance in our field. Thus, these friends are well placed by vocation to appreciate Formula 1 as an avocation. Me, I’m a novice looking in for the first time, but equally qualified to be alternately impressed, astonished, or sympathetic with the achievements and trials of the McLaren F1 team through almost six decades of racing history.Reviewer #1, not a native English-speaker, gave high marks to the photos, especially those of the early history of McLaren, and to the technical illustrations – and, in general, to the inviting “picture book” layout.Reviewer #2, deeply versed in the last decade or so of Formula 1, was most taken by the historical background and the clearly presented progression of successive car generations, as the designers reacted to the unceasing pace of rule changes and technological progress.Reviewer #3, who kept the book for many weeks, immersed himself in the details of the technological advancements – in suspensions, engines, tires, and, more latterly, in crash protection and aerodynamics.And what, then, are the impressions of this tyro? First, impressions of the book: It is a beautiful “lap book” for casually dipping into, though I think a reader inexperienced in the history of Formula 1 will get the most out of the book by reading through it sequentially, each of the seven chapters covering a decade. The large-format pages are typically filled half with illustrations and half with text, and the closer in time we get to the modern age of digital photography, the more spectacular the pictures become – for example, the first attachment here. As did one of my fellow reviewers, I was taken by the combination of photos and related explanatory technical illustrations (e.g., the second attachment).As to the story the book tells, it was eye-opening to me. I exclaimed to my fellow reviewers the amazement I felt at the blistering pace of technical development, every season’s car being, effectively, a one-off prototype never to be reproduced, only modified over the space of (typically) one season and then sold away. Further, I found astonishing the number of races left unfinished through seemingly minor technical failures: A bolt drops out of suspension member, for example, and the car can’t be steered. In the airplane biz we take for granted concepts such as fail-safety and multiple load paths, but Bruce McLaren himself was killed in a mere practice session when a bit of bodywork came off at speed, upsetting the aerodynamics of the car and making it uncontrollable.The pace of development was felt to be necessitated by the constantly changing rulebook; and certainly the rulebook evolved in response to the pace of development! A cynic could be forgiven for imagining the rule-makers suspecting a technical breakthrough: “Ah! A brilliant idea! We must make it illegal!”And further, it becomes clear that the “politics” of Formula 1 – the clash of egos and yearnings for dominance – are part of every season, every chapter here. I did not find this depressing or boring; realistically, this is just the nature of high-powered individuals in highly visible positions of responsibility, climbing mountains of money.A curiosity of the book is that it “lands in the air.” The end of the text is the end of the 2023 season, and there is no summing-up, no dénouement, no concluding recapitulation. One turns the page expecting such, but there begins the multi-page Appendix listing every McLaren F1 race result from 1966 to 2023. Given the nature of the book, though, this is a quibble, and not worth a star. Otherwise, the text of author Stuart Codling moves along smartly, nudged by irony, humor, forebodings, or technical grit as appropriate. The level of specialist knowledge expected of the reader is, shall we say, moderate: A serious F1 enthusiast will understand intuitively parts that an interested novice, such as myself, will need to piece together by implication. Hence the title of this review – this book is better-suited to the enthusiast than to the visitor. Yet I’m a mere visitor, and I enjoyed this book.

This is a nice size book. It is hard cover and makes a good coffee table book for the McLaren Fan. It is loaded with fantastic photos and interesting reading. If you want a very cool book or you want to give a beautiful gift to a racing or McLaren fan, this would be an excellent choice.