McLaren has unveiled the special livery it will run at the Monaco Grand Prix. The design inspired by motorsport’s ‘Triple Crown’ of races, all of which McLaren has previously won.
Monaco and the Indianapolis 500 are two of the three events counting towards it, and both take place this weekend. The third element of the Triple Crown is next month’s Le Mans 24 Hours race for sports cars.
McLaren, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a company, won the Indy 500 in 1974 and 1976 with Johnny Rutherford. Their first Monaco Grand Prix win did not come until in 1984 when Alain Prost started a run of nine wins in 10 years there for the team.
Ayrton Senna went unbeaten on the streets of Monaco from 1989 to 1993, then Mika Hakkinen put McLaren on top again in 1998, his team mate David Coulthard won Monaco in 2000 and 2002. Victories for Kimi Raikkonen (2005), Fernando Alonso (2007) and Lewis Hamilton (2008) brought McLaren’s Monaco win count up to 15 – the most of any team.
The highlight of McLaren’s brief Le Mans history was in 1995 when teams running its BMW-powered F1 GTR car finished first, third, fourth and fifth.
The first of each of those wins have been incorporated into McLaren’s 2023 Monaco livery, with the rear of the car adorned in a Papaya orange harking back to Rutherford’s Indy 500-winning livery. The middle of the MCL60 is white, evoking the iconic liveries McLaren used through the eighties. The race-winning Le Mans livery was all-black, so the top of the MCL60’s nose will switch from orange to black as the front wing and the sides of the front-end of the chassis are already painted dark.
McLaren’s four-car Indy 500 entry this weekend is also celebrating the brand’s history and Triple Crown success, with each of the cars using a different livery referencing those past wins. The F1 team will also run its special livery at next week’s Spanish Grand Prix.
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