A superb and rare photo of the absolutely great Aryton Senna in his truly magnificent McLaren MP4 - Honda Formula 1 race car, seen in action during the 1988 season.

McLaren is a Formula One team based in Woking, Surrey, UK. Founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor but has also competed in the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race and Canadian-American Challenge Cup. The team is one of the most successful teams in Formula One, having won 162 races, 12 Drivers' Championships and 8 Constructors' Championships. The team were the first to design a car using a carbon fibre monocoque, which is now ubiquitous in its use by all teams. Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, initially as a builder of sports cars. The team built and raced a series of cars powered by American V8s in various races in Canada and the US. The team was transformed in 1967 when they introduced the Mk6, the first cars in McLaren orange, and completely dominated the 1967 Can-Am season. The Kiwi made the team’s Grand Prix debut at the 1966 Monaco race. However, Bruce’s race was rather short-lived due to a terminal oil leak on the car. The 1966 programme was hampered by a poor choice of engines—Bruce had selected a short-stroke version of the 4.2 litre Ford Indy engine, which generated a lot of noise but very little power and was big and bulky. Ironically, Jack Brabham had adopted a Repco-developed engine based on a similar Oldsmobile block to the one Bruce was using in his early sports cars and his team took the 1966 and 1967 world championships. Bruce abandoned the Ford in favour of a woefully underpowered but at least reliable Serenissima V8 (a descendant of the old ATS V8) to score the team's first point. In 1967 he initially turned to a slightly enlarged M4 Formula Two car powered by a 2.0 litre BRM V8 before building a similar but slightly larger car called the M5 for the BRM V12. This was quick but had reliability problems and Bruce soon decided that the team had to adopt the Cosworth DFV engine. In 1966 and 1967 the team raced only one car in the Championship with Bruce behind the wheel. In addition to his Grand Prix duties, Bruce contested the Can-Am Championship that year and, alongside team mate Denny Hulme, the pair won five out of the season’s six races. In 1968 with the Cosworth powered M7 the team consisted of two drivers including reigning Formula One World Champion Denny Hulme who also drove for McLaren in Can-Am that year. Bruce won the non-championship Race of Champions, at the Brands Hatch circuit, then the Belgian Grand Prix was the scene of the team's first Championship win. Hulme won the Italian Grand Prix and Canadian Grand Prix later in the year. A further three podium finishes followed for Bruce in 1969, but the team's fifth win had to wait until the last race of the 1969 championship when Hulme won the Mexican Grand Prix. In Can-Am the McLaren team won all eleven races. Bruce McLaren won six races, Hulme five, and Bruce won the driver's championship. As a team, McLaren had a disastrous beginning to the decade. The team entered the Indianapolis 500 for the first time but Hulme was severely burned on the hands in an incident in practice. Peter Revson replaced Hulme but retired from the race. Bruce's business partner Teddy Mayer took over effective control of the team. Twelve days after Bruce McLaren's passing on 2 June 1970, Dan Gurney won the opening Can-Am race of 1970 at Mosport for McLaren. The McLaren M8D won nine of the ten races in 1970 and Hulme won the championship. In 1971 the team saw off the challenge of 1969 World Champion Jackie Stewart in the Lola T260, winning eight races, with Peter Revson taking the title. McLaren went winless in Formula 1 in 1970 and 1971, years dominated by Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart respectively. Hulme took the team's first F1 win since Bruce's death in the 1972 South African Grand Prix with the M19C. Hulme also won three Can-Am races in 1972 but the McLaren M20 was defeated by the Porsche 917/10s of Mark Donohue and George Follmer. McLaren decided to abandon the Can-Am series at the end of 1972, focussing solely on Formula One and USAC. The original Can-Am series itself ceased at the end of 1974, with McLaren by far the most successful constructor with 43 wins. In USAC competition Peter Revson had won pole position for the 1971 Indianapolis 500 in a McLaren M16. The M16 introduced to USAC competition the concept of mounting the car's engine entirely ahead of the rear axle, rather than partly over it, as was the standard at the time. The car also wore prominent front and rear wings, another practice not common in American racing. Revson finished second in 1971, and Mark Donohue won the '500' in 1972 driving a McLaren-Offenhauser run by Roger Penske. The McLaren M23, designed by Gordon Coppuck, was the team's new car for the 1973 Formula One season. It was described by Coppuck as being essentially the front of an M16 and the back of an M19. It was a wedge-shaped car following the same concept as the Lotus 72 but with more conventional suspension and up to date aerodynamics. Hulme won with it in Sweden and Revson took the only Grand Prix wins of his career in Britain and Canada. At Indianapolis, Johnny Rutherford took pole position in the "works" M16C. In 1974 Emerson Fittipaldi joined McLaren, now under the direction of Teddy Mayer, from Lotus to become their lead driver. The team achieved their first Formula One World Constructors' and World Drivers' Championship (with Fittipaldi) and their first Indianapolis 500 win (with Johnny Rutherford). The year also saw Yardley cosmetics replaced as Formula One sponsor by Marlboro cigarettes (although one Yardley car was run by an ostensibly separate team for the year alongside the two Marlboro entries), a deal that was to last until 1997. 1975 was a less successful year for the team. Fittipaldi was second in the championship behind Niki Lauda. Jochen Mass took his sole GP win in Spain, and Rutherford was second at Indianapolis. At the end of 1975 Fittipaldi left McLaren to join his brother's Fittipaldi/Copersucar team. The Drivers' Championship would come McLaren's way again in 1976 with Fittipaldi's replacement, James Hunt beating Niki Lauda by a single point. Meanwhile Johnny Rutherford scored McLaren's second Indianapolis 500 victory, with the team becoming the first team to twice accomplish both feats in the same year. Hunt won three times in F1 in 1977, but these would prove to be McLaren's last GP wins of the decade. The M23's replacement, the M26 was a troublesome car, and subsequent models were even less successful. McLaren ended their American involvement at the end of the 1979 CART season after increasingly poor returns from the series. The current team was formed by the merger of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing with Ron Dennis's Project Four Racing in 1981. Shortly after the merger, Dennis organised a buyout of the original McLaren shareholders to take full control of the team. McLaren is part of McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group. Engines are supplied by McLaren shareholder Mercedes-Benz through Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines. Dennis was team principal from the 1981 merger until March 2009, when he agreed to transfer his position to longtime McLaren employee Martin Whitmarsh. Dennis will continue to work within the McLaren Group. On 29 May 2009 McLaren, along with all other members of Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) submitted their entries for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship, despite threatening to pull out at the end of the year.

This is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a wonderful era of McLaren automotive history in a wonderful way.  This is your rare chance to own this photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 12" (ca. 20 cm x 30 cm).  It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.

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