200 GP's for McLaren and Mercedes-Benz partnership

The 14th round of the 2006 Formula 1 Championship takes place at the Istanbul Speedway this weekend and the event will mark the 200th race for the partnership between McLaren and Mercedes-Benz. The Turkish Grand Prix will also be the 200th for the Technology Partnership with ExxonMobil as well as the Team's official suppliers Henkel and Enkei. Henkel joined the team in 1995 originally under the Loctite brand.

Since 1995 Team McLaren Mercedes cars have completed a total of 94,572 racing kilometres, which is the equivalent of driving around the world 2.4 times.

Of those 14,400 have been whilst leading a grand prix, which would equate to 15 journeys from the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking to Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart.

The McLaren and Mercedes-Benz partnership made its race debut on 26th March 1995 at the Brazilian Grand Prix with drivers Mika Hakkinen and Mark Blundell both scoring points, finishing fourth and sixth.

The team has scored points 232 times in 199 starts adding up to a total of 1,219 points.

During the 199 races since 1995 Team McLaren Mercedes performed approximately 800 pit stops and a total of approximately 1100 sets of race tyres were used.

Since 1995 Team McLaren Mercedes has won two Drivers' World Championships in 1998 and 1999 with Mika Hakkinen and finished as runner-up on four occasions with Mika Hakkinen (2000), David Coulthard (2001) and Kimi Raikonnen (2003 and 2005).

Team McLaren Mercedes was crowned Constructors' World Champion in 1998 and finished four times as runner-up (1999 / 2000 / 2001 / 2005)

Team McLaren Mercedes has won a total of 44 races, which is 22 percent of all the races.

On 14 occasions Team McLaren Mercedes has scored one-two finishes, the last of which was last year at the penultimate race of the season in Brazil when Juan Pablo Montoya finished ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Team McLaren Mercedes drivers have finished on the podium a total of 139 times over this 11.5 year period.

Pole position has been filled with a Team McLaren Mercedes car 45 times with Kimi Raikkonen achieving the most recent pole position for the team at the last race three weeks ago in Hungary.

The front row of the starting grid has been occupied by both Team McLaren Mercedes drivers a total of 20 times.

In almost a third of all the races since the start of the 1995 season, Team McLaren Mercedes has scored the fastest lap of the race, a total 59 times.

Team McLaren Mercedes cars have been in the leading position of the race in a total 3012 out of 12603 laps.

Team McLaren Mercedes has taken victory in 18 different countries over five continents.

Since 1995 nine different drivers have driven for Team McLaren Mercedes, Mika Hakkinen (114 starts), Nigel Mansell (2), Mark Blundell (15), Jan Magnussen (1), David Coulthard (150), Kimi Raikkonen (83), Juan Pablo Montoya (27), Pedro de la Rosa (4) and Alex Wurz (1).

Ron Dennis and Norbert Haug have definitely been asked over 2000 questions during the traditional 'Meet the Team' press conferences.

Team McLaren Mercedes has distributed 796 press releases in the Media Centre over the last 199 races.

Over this period there have been three World Cups and three European Championships but luckily for the Anglo-German relations in Team McLaren Mercedes, Germany and England have only played football against each other on four occasions (three of which were on a Grand Prix weekend) with Germany winning on two occasions and England also winning twice.