Early success. A McLaren tradition.
2008 will go down in history as the year 23-year-old Lewis Hamilton became the youngest ever Formula 1 World Champion.
Lewis possessed an ambitious, definitively McLaren streak from a very early age. When he was only 10, he approached Ron Dennis at an awards ceremony and told him, "I want to race for you one day." Three years later, Lewis’ prodigious talents were duly recognised and he was signed to the McLaren and Mercedes-Benz Young Driver Support Programme. Ron Dennis says of it: "The Young Driver Support Programme has been designed to create genuine support for drivers who, without the commercial horsepower that we can bring, may not have made it on their own."
A new McLaren world champion
Aged just 21, Lewis’ ambition was realised when he graduated to one of the two highly coveted Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 team seats. After finishing an agonising second (by just one point) in his debut season – the best rookie performance in Formula 1 history – he went one better in 2008 in MP4-23. Winning the Championship on the last corner of the last race of the season, he joined the illustrious list of McLaren world champions, including Lewis’ idol Ayrton Senna.
This nurturing of young talent isn’t confined to our drivers. The world’s finest engineering prospects are encouraged to join the McLaren team early, as apprentices, and they stay for many years.
When individual talent meets teamwork
Our state-of-the-art, 57,000m2 McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, England, was the birthplace of the MP4-23. It was the product of a highly collaborative campus-like environment, where our 150-strong team of designers and engineers use cutting-edge simulation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), wind tunnel, electronic and carbon composite technologies work with our drivers to develop and hone their car over the course of a season.
The sport’s governing body, the FIA, imposed strict engineering regulations for the 2008 season, which meant that many of the developments we made to 2007 model were purely aerodynamic. In particular, the higher nose cone, space-age front wings and sidepods featured some characteristically ingenious improvements that ultimately delivered the critical 10ths and 100ths of a second that make the winning difference.