The daughter of McLaren founder Bruce McLaren, Amanda, opened the McLaren exhibition in the Louwman Museum yesterday. The exhibition shows both the racing cars and the street cars of the brand.
Bruce McLaren started it in 1963 Bruce McLaren Racing Team. Only three years later the team started in Formula 1, where it won a race for the first time in 1968. As his daughter Amanda rightly remarks: 'McLaren is the oldest team in Formula 1, apart from that one team with those red cars. These are the only teams that were already active in the years "60 and that are still today."
It is a pity that those activities from the 60 are not visible at this exhibition: the oldest Formula 1 car is a copy from the collection of Frits van Eerd, a McLaren-Honda MP4-5B from 1990 that was driven by Ayrton Senna.
McLaren F1 GTR or the M8F?
Nevertheless, there is a lot to see at the exhibition in the museum in The Hague, including the McLaren F1 GTR with which Marc Duez, Jacques Lafitte and Steve Soper participated in Le Mans in 1996. That provided good food for discussion, with the eternal question: what if you could choose one? The fiercest competition for the F1 in answering that question consists of the M8F Can-Am winner from Peter Revson from 1971.
The cars that are visible in the museum are not all equally classic: the recent P1 GTR can also be seen there, as well as two of the newest models of the brand, the 570 GT and the 720S.
The exhibition is open to the public from today and can be seen in the Louwman Museum up to and including 27 August. Exact opening times can be found at louwmanmuseum.nl.
Photos: Luuk van Kaathoven