The Donington Park Museum which closed three years ago this month had the largest number of exhibits of any motor sport museum including a comprehensive collection of McLarens, and this is a photograph of a few of these cars that I took on a visit there in March 1996.
The nearest car is the McLaren M7A that was used by the team in the 1968 and 1969 seasons, giving McLaren its first Grand Prix win when Bruce McLaren drove it to victory in the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix. Denny Hulme went on to win two further races that season, in Italy and Canada. In 1969 McLaren together with several other teams built 4-wheel drive cars in an attempt to harness the power of the 3 litre Cosworth engine and the next car is the 1969 McLaren M9A 4-wheel drive car. This car appeared in only one race, the British Grand Prix where it was driven by Derek Bell but retired after 5 laps, after which McLaren abandoned the 4-wheel drive experiment as did all the other teams. The third car is the McLaren M14A that the team raced in the 1970 season, a development of the M7A/C, Denny Hulme having 3 third place and 3 fourth place finishes to end up in fourth place in the World Drivers' Championship. The fourth car in the line is a McLaren M8D which was built to contest the 1970 Can-Am season and has a 7.6 litre Chevrolet V8 engine. Denny Hulme won the 1970 Can-Am Series in one of these cars, winning six of the ten races. It was also in one of these cars that Bruce McLaren died in a test session at Goodwood in 1970 when a part of the rear bodywork came adrift causing him to crash.
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