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Bruce McLaren takes his team's first Grand Prix victory, Belgium 1968.

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"?

Moto: Ilmor confirm Portugal MotoGP debut	by Virgil Ellipse 10th Oct 2006

Former Formula One engine designer Mario Illien's new MotoGP team will debut at next week's Portuguese Grand Prix as a wild card entry. Illien, whose Ilmor team supplied title-winning engines to McLap'em in 1998 and 1999, re-founded Ilmor last year when he bought back the "special projects" arm of the company that he sold to Mercedes. He now hopes to establish the company as a manufacturer of motorcycle engines. Garry McCoy, the team's rider, said that he was impressed by the engine's performance during testing. "It's got fantastic straight-line speed," said the Australian, "although it's a bit of a handful round some of the faster corners." In a departure from the traditional 990cc two- or four-cylinder engines used by most other teams in the championship, Illmor's new engine is based on the company's last F1 engine and the team had some initial difficulties squeezing a three-litre V10 into the bike's chassis. The current solution, where the engine is mounted on a cradle just above the rider, causes such instability during cornering that the bike also has to be fitted with a Cray Supercomputer just to keep it upright, although the bike's top speed in a straight line is believed to approach 500mph. The team has also been encouraged by a feature in an upcoming episode of the BBC's Top Gear, in which presenter Richard Hammond managed to take almost half of the famous "Gambon" corner at just over 300mph.

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KEY TO SERIES NAMES (hovering over the abbreviations in the table above also shows the full series name)
F1	Formula 1 The world's most prominent, most expensive and frequently most tedious single-seater series.
F3	Formula 3 The top national single-seater motor-racing series. Or the bottom international one.
Moto	MotoGP Four wheels good - two wheels baaaaad.