McLaren · 1966–2025
Best-placed McLaren driver (Drivers' Championship) vs. team finish (Constructors' Championship), by year. Position 1 (top) is best; position 16 (bottom) is worst. Blue dots mark title wins; shaded bands are the runs of seasons when McLaren won neither championship.
Niki Lauda is the only driver to have won a title in both a McLaren and a Ferrari — 1984 in the Marlboro red-and-white MP4/2, seven years after the second of his two in Ferrari red, so all three of his titles came in a red car. He is on both lists and no one else is: see the Ferrari chart. Lewis Hamilton, champion here in 2008, has driven for Ferrari since 2025.
Papaya is the modern identity rather than the historical one, and this list is where that shows: nine of these thirteen titles were won in Marlboro red-and-white (1974–1996), three in silver (West in 1998–99, Vodafone in 2008), and exactly one — Norris in 2025 — in papaya. The orange belongs to Bruce McLaren's own cars of the 1960s and to the team since 2017, either side of every championship above it but the last.
The shaded bands on the chart are the first group: runs of five seasons or more in which McLaren won neither championship. Single-championship gaps are listed after them only where they differ — which is to say, only where the other title interrupted them: Hunt in 1976, Häkkinen in 1999 and Hamilton in 2008 each won a drivers' title inside a constructors' drought, and Hamilton's win is what splits the 25-year one into the two shorter bands above.