His name lives on in McLaren Racing Team which has been the most successful in Formula One championship history, with McLaren cars and drivers winning 19 world championships. McLaren cars totally dominated CanAm sports car racing with 56 wins between 1967 and 1972 (and five constructors’ championships), and have won three Indianapolis 500 races, as well as LeMans 24 hours and Sebring 12 hours.

As a nine year old, McLaren contracted a disease in his hip which left his left leg shorter than the right. He spent two years in traction, but later often had a slight limp.

Les and Ruth McLaren, his parents, owned a service station and workshop in Remuera, Auckland. Bruce spent all of his free hours hanging around the workshop.

Les McLaren restored an ageing Austin 7 Ulster which young Bruce used in 1952, aged 14, when he entered his first competition, a hillclimb. Two years later he took part in his first real race and showed promise. He moved up from the Austin to a Ford 10 special and Austin-Healey, then a F2 Cooper-Climax sports. He immediately began to modify and improve it -- and master it -- so much so that he was runner-up in the 1957-58 New Zealand championship series.

His performance in the New Zealand Grand Prix in 1957 was noted by great Australian driver Jack Brabham (who would later invite McLaren to drive for him). Because of his obvious potential the New Zealand International Grand Prix organisation selected him for its ‘Driver in Europe’ scheme designed to give a promising Kiwi driver year-round experience with the best in the world. McLaren was the first recipient and Chris Amon was another later.

McLaren went to Cooper and stayed seven years. He raced in F2 and was entered in the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring in which F2 and F1 cars competed together. He astounded the motor racing fraternity by being first F2, and fifth overall, in a field of the best drivers in the world.

McLaren became Cooper's F1 driver in 1958 and won the United States Grand Prix, at 22, the youngest ever to win a GP event. (Forty three years later, another Kiwi racer, Scott Dixon, became the youngest ever winner in any open-wheel racing anywhere in the world when he won the Indycar Lehigh Valley GP in the US when 20 years, 9 months and 14 days old.}

McLaren won the Monaco GP in 1962. The next year he founded Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd but continued to race and win in Coopers (including the New Zealand GP in 1965).

McLaren left Cooper and announced his own GP racing team, with co-driver and fellow Kiwi Denny Hulme (who became world champion in 1967). He won his first GP in his own McLaren car at Spa in 1968 and Hulme won twice in the McLaren-Ford.

It was in powerful sports car racing where McLaren's design flair and ingenuity were graphically demonstrated. Just as the CanAm Series began to become very popular with fans in Canada and the US, the new McLaren cars finished second twice, and third twice, in six races.

In 1967 they won five of six races and in 1968, four of six. The following year McLaren’s proved unbeatable, winning 11 of 11 races. In one race, they finished 1-2-3. (McLaren, Hulme and Dan Gurney).

It was in his own CanAm car that McLaren was killed. He was testing his new M8D at Goodwood when it left the track at high speed and hit a marshall’s flag station.