Currently reading: How McLaren ended its 26-year F1 title drought

Piers Thynne, operating chief for Autocar Award winner McLaren F1, spills all on its return to glory

The McLaren Technology Centre still looks futuristic enough to double for a spaceport on Coruscant, so it’s staggering to reflect on the fact that it’s now 21 years old.

Even more staggering given its age is that a constructors’ championship-winning McLaren had never been built there – until last year. When Lando Norris crossed the line to win the 2024 season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, McLaren ended a 26-year constructors’ championship drought – the longest in the history of the sport.

The team came close a few times and clinched the 2008 drivers’ title with Lewis Hamilton, but there had also been some humiliating lows: in 2017 the Woking squadfinished ninth out of 10 teams. McLaren’s dogged climb back up the ranks and return to title-winning glory is why we have named the team the winner of our Motorsport Award.

It would be easy to distil success in Formula 1 down to building a fast car, sticking a powerful engine in it (a Mercedes, in this case) and having two quick drivers – and in Norris and Oscar Piastri, McLaren might have F1’s strongest line-up. But there’s more to it than that.

McLaren’s rise has been built on the efforts of the 1000 or so staff working incredibly hard in the McLaren Technology Centre. That effort has been led by Piers Thynne, the 17-year McLaren veteran whose role as chief operating officer means he essentially runs the factory.

He describes last year’s Abu Dhabi race as “the culmination of an incredibly focused period of work for the whole team”. McLaren started 2024 trailing Red Bull on pace, but an upgrade package in Miami changed the pecking order, he says: “As a team we worked across all functions – aero, technical and operations – and dug deep to deliver a large upgrade for Miami.

That was a pivotal moment in the season.” Thynne describes his role as being “an enabler”, supporting all areas of the team to be the best that they can be. The role has also included a lot of work helping McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown and F1 team principal Andrea Stella to change the culture.

“The culture of the team has gone from good to extremely positive in the past 18 to 24 months,” reveals Thynne, “and that has come from Zak and Andrea’s approach.

They empower me to drive that each and every day. We don’t need a hierarchy; we just need good people working together and having good conversations to ensure we are all pushing to deliver performance.”

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In sport, winning often cures everything, and the mood in the team has lifted as McLaren has started to win regularly. Thynne says success helps “drive the team forward”, but he adds that it’s important everyone understands they can’t rest on their laurels.

“F1 is an extremely complex sport and things can go wrong,” he says. “When you’re celebrating success you still have to push reliability, push performance and push every opportunity to score points.

“You have to be humble, but ultimately working in F1 is a privilege because you’re at the pinnacle of motorsport. You can never expect an outcome: an outcome is the result of the work you’ve put in. We ask everybody to avoid positive or negative hype and focus on what we need to do as a factory, which is to give Lando and Oscar the best equipment each and every race.”

McLaren’s last constructors’ title in 1998 came in a different era of F1, with near-unlimited spending. Teams now have a cost cap (this year it’s £104 million), so much of Thynne’s effort is expended working out how McLaren can “extract every amount of performance per pound”.

He adds: “It’s a really exciting challenge. It means the brainpower you put in is a competitive differentiator against others; you have to look at all angles of how you spend your money and where your focus should be.”

As an example, he has to decide between spending money building a stock of spare parts in case of accidents against developing upgrades, and how much effort to put towards development of the car for 2026, when F1 will undergo a significant regulatory change with new chassis and powertrain rules.

“We relish the challenge of regulation changes, because it gives the opportunity for the sport to reset,” he says.

A reset isn’t always good news for F1’s top team: after Hamilton’s 2008 drivers’ title, a major regulation change for 2009 left McLaren struggling to compete at the sharp end. But trying to maintain its position at the head of the pack is a good problem for McLaren to face – one it hasn’t had to deal with for 26 years.

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James Attwood

James Attwood, digital editor
Title: Associate editor

James is Autocar’s associate editor, and has more than 20 years of experience of working in automotive and motorsport journalism. He has been in his current role since September 2024, and helps lead Autocar's features and new sections, while regularly interviewing some of the biggest names in the industry. Oh, and he once helped make Volkswagen currywurst. Really.

Before first joining Autocar in 2017, James spent more than a decade in motorsport journalist, working on Autosport, autosport.com, F1 Racing and Motorsport News, covering everything from club rallying to top-level international events. He also spent 18 months running Move Electric, Haymarket's e-mobility title, where he developed knowledge of the e-bike and e-scooter markets. 

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