McLaren

McLaren
Origin	United Kingdom
Headquarters	Surrey, Woking, England
Founded	1963
Status	Operating
Divisions	McLaren Special Operations (MSO) McLaren GT McLaren Racing Ltd. (related group)
Games	Asphalt Legends Unite Asphalt 9: Legends China Asphalt 9: Legends Asphalt Street Storm Racing Asphalt Nitro Asphalt 8: Airborne Asphalt 7: Heat Asphalt Injection Asphalt 6: Adrenaline

McLaren Automotive, often simply referred to as McLaren, is a British supercar maker based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Surrey, Woking, England. It is the automotive branch of McLaren Technology Group, which includes the McLaren Racing Ltd. group for Formula One.

Overview

History

Born in 1937, New Zealander Bruce McLaren founded McLaren in 1963, under the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing name. In 1964, he oversaw the production of the first McLaren race car, the M1A, while its successor, the M1B, allowed McLaren into the Can-Am championship and won 43 victories, almost three times more than Porsche, a rival. Debuting at the 1965 Monaco Grand Prix was McLaren's first Formula One race car, the M2B.

McLaren Automotive

In 1980, McLaren merged with Ron Dennis's Project 4 Racing team. In August 1988, Dennis, Team Principal, and Gordon Murray started developing a new car that would eventually become the McLaren F1, launched in 1992 with a limited production run of only 106 units.

Following a brief collaboration with Mercedes-Benz for the SLR McLaren, McLaren Automotive was relaunched as a standalone manufacturer in 2010, spinning off McLaren Racing. In 2010, the 12C, the company's first in-house-developed supercar since the F1, was released, with the Spider model being released in 2013. In 2012, the P1 hybrid hypercar was unveiled, with production spanning the years between 2013 and 2015. After introducing a business plan to release a car or model every year, McLaren Automotive spawned the 650S in Coupé and Spider models in 2014, and unveiled the new Sports Series range comprising the McLaren 570S and 540C in 2015. In 2018, McLaren joined forces with the Instituto Ayrton Senna to create the McLaren Senna, named after Ayrton Senna. In 2019, McLaren introduced the three seater Speedtail and the grand touring McLaren GT, while a year later, they introduced the roofless Elva.

McLaren Racing

McLaren Racing Limited is the racing division of McLaren, which is known for competing in Formula One. The team has seen legendary drivers such as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda, James Hunt, Lewis Hamilton and Mika Hakkinen win world championship titles over the years. McLaren's most notable engines are Porsche, Honda, Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, and Renault. Other legends such as Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button have also driven for the team. As of 2019, the main driver lineup is Lando Norris (4), and Carlos Sainz Jr. (55). However, Daniel Ricciardo (3) will replace Sainz as the Spaniard moves to Scuderia Ferrari for 2021. For two seasons, McLaren uses Renault engines, but the McLaren-Mercedes partnership will return to Formula One in 2021. Aside from Formula One, they also offer customer racing in their specially prepared track-only machines.

Trivia

Asphalt 8: Airborne

• All of the McLaren Formula One race cars have only 10 Pro Kit Levels instead of the usual 5 MAX Upgrades.
• The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722 Edition and McLaren Mercedes MP4-25 are jointly made by Mercedes-Benz.
  • After a September 2017 hotfix update, both cars displayed the McLaren badge instead of the Mercedes-Benz badge in-game.
  • The SLR McLaren was branded as a Mercedes-Benz but was changed to the McLaren badge with the September 2017 hotfix update.
    • After the Munich Update, the SLR McLaren's badge change was reverted. It now displays the Mercedes-Benz badge.
    • In the same hotfix update, the McLaren logo was changed to the current one, which is the same logo used from 2002 onwards but with the entire logo now in white, including the speed mark.
• In the Munich Update, after the RUFs were made unavailable for purchase in the Porsche Update, the RUF-only events were replaced by McLaren events. The events for the RUF CTR 3 were replaced with the McLaren F1 XP-5.

Asphalt Overdrive

• The McLaren P1™ was supposed to appear in Asphalt Overdrive along with Lamborghini Miura, Peugeot 2008 DKR and Koenigsegg One:1, but have never been released and remains in the files of the game. The car's in-game model is identical to its Asphalt 8: Airborne version.

Asphalt Nitro

• The McLaren logo's text appears in black in the garage and event headers, although the text changes to white when opening the Car Paint option.

Asphalt Street Storm Racing

• The McLaren 720S was supposed to appear in Asphalt Street Storm Racing but the car has never debuted for the game since it never gained major updates after 2017. The car's 3D model that could be used for the game was revealed through an ArtStation post by Vlad Tabacaru, 3D Artist at Gameloft who modeled the car.