Founded by the Kiwi Bruce McLaren in 1963, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing merged in 1981 with the Project 4 team, which was being run by the barn owl Ron Dennis. The team is now part of McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group, under the umbrella of McLaren Holdings, a subsidiary of McLaren PLC, which is wholly owned by McLaren (World Domination) Ltd.

Bruce McLaren is currently the only driver to have won a Formula One world championship race in a car bearing his own name as a constructor*, although the dotdotdotcomma-sponsored driver Panasonic Toyota, currently racing a borrowed Caterham with limited success, is optimistic of one day becoming the second.

The team has rapidly become one of the most successful in F1 history and is widely regarded as technologically top-notch, if sometimes a little fragile operationally. They are constantly trying to persuade everyone that they may be stiff and corporate but they still know how to have a good time. It's not terribly convincing.

They're far from unemotional, however, and Ron Dennis can often be glimpsed furtively wiping away a tear or two of joy. In fact, when one of his favoured drivers has won against seemingly insuperable odds during a troubled time for the team, it can sometimes be hard to hear the national anthems over the sound of Ron's blubbing.

*Other than, we've just realised, Jack Brabham. Who also won the world championship. Arse. Rest assured, our research team will be hung, drawn and quartered. Or should that be "hanged"?

Born in the picturesque English hamlet of Stevenage in 1985, Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton was named after the American sprinter Carl Lewis and the legendary British easy listening DJ David Hamilton. He has since moved to Switzerland and attempted to distance himself from association with David Hamilton.

Hamilton famously approached McLaren boss Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards in 1995 and told him that he wanted to race for him one day. Dennis told the ten-year-old Hamilton to call him in a few years and thus was a mutually rewarding relationship forged. Some of the more disreputable members of the dotdotdotcomma staff have since adopted a similar strategy in approaching girls in clubs, although they have yet to demonstrate a level of success anything like Hamilton managed.

On his way to F1, Hamilton picked up titles in karting, Formula Renault UK, the F3 Euroseries and GP2, after which he picked up Nicole Scherzinger, who was apparently already a well-known singer with girl band Pussycat Dolls, but who first came to the attention of the dotdotdotcomma editorial team for wearing a really smashing dress during the title-deciding race at Brazil in 2008 and then jumping about in it quite a lot.

Hamilton's time in F1 has been far from dull and he has shown almost as much ill-conceived misjudgement as he has jaw-dropping ability. The audacious overtaking moves and lightning pace have been accompanied by pit-lane crashes and overly optimistic first-lap lunges, as well as more than his fair share of FIA wrist-slaps.

The decision to strip him of his win at Spa in 2008, seemingly for being too good at overtaking Kimi Raikkonen, still baffles those of us who don't wear Ferrari T-shirts.

Sebastian Vettel holds pretty much all the "youngest ever" F1 records going and several that hadn't even been thought of before he turned up in his pushchair as Sauber's Friday driver in 2006.

At the time of his F1 race debut in 2007, he hadn't actually won a title since taking the 2004 German Formula BMW Championship - not exactly a blue riband championship - and he had twice failed to win the F3 Euroseries, being pipped to the title at his second attempt by team-mate Paul di Resta, a man almost as dull out of the cockpit as he is scintillating in it.

Vettel started as he meant to go on, however, setting a record just six seconds into his F1 career by speeding in the pit lane as soon as he left the garage and chalking up comfortably the shortest time ever between making your debut as an F1 racing driver and incurring a penalty. He's been setting records on a seemingly daily basis ever since and marks each one by shouting, "That's what I'm talking about!", although he usually hasn't ever mentioned it before.

Early in his F1 career he was often referred to as "the new Schumacher" because he (a) comes from Germany, and (2) began racing at the Kerpen karting track, although he has conspicuously failed to live up to the nickname by not repeatedly driving his rivals off the track, parking his car in the middle of the track during qualifying in Monaco or being disqualified from a whole season for trying to kill Jacques Villeneuve, however justified that may have seemed at the time.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Vettel continually changes his helmet design, which should make it more difficult to identify him during a race, although oddly enough it has probably made it easier: if there's a driver whose helmet you don't recognise, the chances are Sebastian Vettel is wearing it and if you can't be bothered to learn helmet designs, you can recognise Vettel because he'll be the bloke leading the race.

A life-long sufferer of slanty-finger syndrome (digitalis diagonalis), Sebastian is unable to point his index fingers straight up. His own condition is the "30-degree" strain, for which there is currently no cure; we can only hope that he simply stops qualifying in pole position and winning races, so that he will no longer be forced to display his disability in public and we can all stop laughing at him when he does.

Jenson Button came into the world in Somerset in 1980. He has two slightly silly middle names - Alexander Lyons - and three slightly older sisters, born at regular internals in 1967, 1970 and 1973, although far be it from us to suggest that little Jenson was slightly less planned than his sisters.

Success in karting and Formula Ford led to Formula 3 and then almost immediately on to Formula One, where he made a few rookie mistakes but also qualified third in a Williams at Spa, which went a long way towards shutting everyone the hell up.

Still under contract to Williams, Jenson drove the 2001 season for Benetton, which became Renault in 2002 and BAR the year after. This was clearly all a bit confusing for Button, who announced in mid-2004 that he would be driving for Williams the following season, having signed contracts for both teams. Once that legal Gordian knot had been cut, Jenson went and did it all again in reverse in 2005, as he tried to wriggle out of his contract with Williams to stay with BAR.

Throughout all this vacillating, Jenson was linked with a succession of beauties, perhaps indicating that what women really want is a rich man in touch with his feminine side or, to put it another way, a Formula One driver who can never make his f**king mind up.

Button is often joined at races by his father John who, ever since Jenson won the first race of the 2009 season, has taken to wearing his "lucky pink shirt", conveniently forgetting - in the way that superstitious people do - all the times he wore the same shirt and Jenson finished three laps down.

Jenson has homes in Monaco, the UK and Bahrain, where he pursues his hobbies of mountain biking, almost growing a beard and browsing through lingerie catalogues to find his next girlfriend.

Alonso's full name is Fernando Alonso Diaz and few people realise that he is the half-brother of Cameron Diaz, the well-known jizz-haired actress.

His success in Formula One has led to a huge growth of interest in the sport in his home country of Spain, where not so long ago you could easily pick up cheap tickets to the Grand Prix and pretty much have your pick of seats, so thanks for that, Fernando.

Like many of the sport's stars, Alonso began his F1 career with Minardi and he made a splash at his first race, where he out-qualified his team-mate by over two and a half seconds. That margin is rendered slightly less impressive when you learn that his team-mate was Tarso Marques who, as racing drivers go, has a lovely personality.

Fernando was soon snapped up by Renault, where he spent a year testing before being promoted to a race seat. He became the then youngest world champion in 2005 and the youngest double champion in 2006. There followed an abbreviated tenure at McLaren which failed to yield a third title, largely because he proved unable to beat a rookie, after which he was welcomed back to the Renault team, where he is expected to wait grumpily until a Ferrari seat becomes available.

Alonso is an exceptionally talented and complete racing driver but he also has a reckless - often self-destructive - streak and an eccentrically unique take on what it means to be a team-player, traits which have doubtless closed a number of F1 doors to him.

In 2005 he was appointed one of UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassadors, which may explain why he never has any left for anyone else.