Eight years and 291 days since Jenson Button scored the last victory of his career, McLaren is again a race winner in Formula 1.
It was a long, fruitless time for one of the most successful teams in F1 history. Only Ferrari has won more races than McLaren, which makes it hard to imagine that nearly nine years passed between their recent triumphs.
The team has had dry spells before, but nothing like it. From 1978 to 1980 they had three seasons without a win, after which Ron Dennis took over the team and John Watson celebrated the long-awaited victory at the British Grand Prix in 1981.
Another barren period lasted from 1994 to 1996 after losing both Ayrton Senna’s formidable talent and Honda’s powerful engines. David Coulthard brought them back to victory in Melbourne in 1997, their first victory with Mercedes engines.
Similarly, the team’s most recent reincarnation broke its winning streak after reuniting with Mercedes this year after unsuccessful ties with Honda (as a works team) and Renault (as a customer).
Report: Monaco GP 1996 – three cars tumble towards the flagThose 3,213 days between wins is the second longest for a team that has been a constant competitor during that time. Ligier managed the longest waiting time between victories. When Olivier Panis won the Monaco Grand Prix in 1996, it was 14 years and 235 days since the team’s last triumph, courtesy of Jacques Laffite in Canada during the 1981 season.
Ligier’s winning streak is longer as measured by races, though the difference isn’t that big as the calendars have grown over the years. They drove 231 races between wins compared to McLaren’s 171. The team best placed to beat both streaks is Williams, whose last win before this season was like McLaren in 2012.
Other teams played longer between wins while spending time outside of the sport. These include Renault, Lotus, Honda and Mercedes – the latter sat out as a complete designer every season from 1956 to 2009 and ended a 56-year drought when Nico Rosberg won the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix.
Daniel Ricciardo delivered McLaren’s 183rd triumph. Once the most successful Formula 1 team in terms of overall victories, they are now 55 behind leaders Ferrari. However, they have had a relatively dry spell lately: two years have passed since their last victory before the F1 started its next round in Sochi. They added 18 wins while McLaren waited to win.
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This was Ricciardo’s first win for a team other than Red Bull and the eighth of his career. He now has as many victories as Jacky Ickx and Denny Hulme. Lando Norris finished on the podium for the fifth time, but after leading his teammate home in most races, it must be true that Ricciardo was the first to take a win.
Ricciardo and Norris need 13 more double victories to achieve these two. Ricciardo and Norris delivered McLaren’s 48th one-two. The powerhouses Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost brought in the most for the team at 14, one more than Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard.
That plus third place for Ricciardo in the Sprint Qualifier and the bonus point for the fastest lap meant McLaren scored 45 points, the second highest ever for a team in a single race weekend. Most of the teams that can score with one-two wins in sprint qualifying and the race plus fastest lap under current rules are 49, but the only remaining race in which this is possible is the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
The unexpected result brings McLaren back in the constructors’ championship ahead of Ferrari. In the battle for third place, the two are now 13.5 points apart.
However, the disappointment for AlphaTauri was huge 12 months after their shocking home win. Yuki Tsunoda was unable to start and 2020 winner Pierre Gasly dropped out after three laps. Until last weekend, they were the only remaining team that scored points in every race this year.
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Italian Grand Prix 2021
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