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Can-Am McLaren M8B – Profile and Photos by Pete Lyons

McLaren M8B at Texas Speedway
Seen at Texas, the M8B's tall airfoil was mounted directly on the rear wheel uprights (hub carriers), sending the downforce directly to the tires, not through the chassis. This meant the suspension springs could remain supple for good compliance over bumps.

Can-Am McLaren M8B – The Perfect Race Car

Story and Photos by Pete Lyons

Bruce McLaren, McLaren M8B, Road America
Arguably McLaren\’s best-ever car, certainly its most successful Can-Am car, the M8B carried Bruce to 6 victories in 1969, including here at Road America.

Some race cars come off the shop floor ready to win their very first race. One beauty famous for doing so was 1967’s F1 Lotus 49.

More rarely, a new car will win its first couple of times out. That same year, Ford’s GT40 Mark IV scored at Sebring and then Le Mans. Because those were its only two races, technically the Mk IV was a perfect racecar.

So what do we say about a car that so dominated an 11-round season that it finished first all 11 times?

That remarkable record of perfection is emblazoned on the memory of McLaren’s M8B, a yellow-orange, winged wedge with a rev-happy aluminum Big Block Chevrolet. Powerful, well sorted and reliable, it totally dominated the longest-ever season of the Canadian-American Challenge Cup series for “unlimited” sports racing cars.

Not only did team principle Bruce McLaren and teammate Denny Hulme win all those Can-Ams, they started from all 11 poles, and ten times it was an all-M8B front row. In ten races the M8Bs set fastest lap, and eight times the second car followed its leader home in second place.

Out of 24 total starts (a third car ran twice, with guest drivers Dan Gurney and Chris Amon) there were only four DNFs.

What made the B so good? Frankly, it wasn’t so much the car itself as the team behind it. New Zealander Bruce McLaren, not only a race-winning F1 and sports car driver but also a sound engineer, built a tight, efficient, ambitious little team that brought F1 expertise and intensity to North American sports car racing. A few rivals built cars nearly as fast as McLaren’s (in ’69 these included Ferrari and Holman Moody) but none could keep them running fast to the ends of the races.

But even Bruce McLaren had to work to succeed. When the Can-Am began in 1966, McLaren’s team couldn’t finish better than second. Stung, he came back in 1967 with an all-new car that won five out of that year’s six races and made “Boss Bruce” the Can-Am champion. The next year, it was four team wins out of six races and fellow Kiwi Denny “The Bear” Hulme was Can-Am king. People started muttering about “The Bruce and Denny Show.”

Still, people loved these big, loud, wild-looking cars driven by the best talent on the planet, and for 1969 officials expanded the series to 11 rounds. Just possibly, they were thinking to give someone else more of a chance to beat McLaren.

Scroll back up to the race results to see how that turned out!

For the first time in the Can-Am’s four years, in 1969 McLaren did not field an all-new car. As the “B” implies, the M8B was no more than a development of the previous season’s M8A design. In fact, that spare B was actually built out of a 1968 A. In the season finale, McLaren used it to secure his second championship.

Most noticeable change on the B was McLaren’s adoption of a rear wing. That half-copied a 1966 innovation by Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2E, which carried its wing high up in clean airflow atop two tall struts that fed the downforce, not into the sprung chassis, but directly into the rear wheel hubs.

There was much more to Chaparral’s novel aero package, but McLaren took only the basic wing idea, leaving out the driver-controllable pivoting feature whereby the Chaparral could be trimmed on the fly for both high downforce in turns and low drag on straights. Mclaren drivers had to leave it to their pit crews to set wing angles to a single compromise position.

Clearly, that was good enough. Perfect, actually.

Can-Am McLaren M8B – Photo Gallery (click image for larger picture)

Can-Am pace lap at Road America
The Bruce and Denny Show pace Road America in 1969. Behind the twin M8Bs (#5, Hulme on pole and #4, McLaren) come the Lolas of Peter Revson (#31) and Chuck Parsons, then the #16 Ferrari of Chris Amon alongside the #98 McLaren of George Eaton. Behind these high-wing cars are, left to right, Jo Siffert\’s Porsche, George Follmer\’s Ford and John Surtees\’ Chaparral. (Mario Andretti\’s McLaren should be third on the grid but has already broken). After 200 miles the finishing order will be McLaren, Hulme and, a lap back, Parsons.
Dennis Hulme sitting in McLaren M8B listening to Bruce McLaren
Denny \’The Bear\’ Hulme, seen in the cockpit of his M8B at Watkins Glen, was a former (1967) world F1 champion who took to the much bigger, much more powerful — and usually faster — Can-Am cars as if they were made for him. And in a sense they were, as he was active in their design and testing and even could be caught working on them. Still, the team\’s style and direction primarily reflected the conservative, pragmatic, efficient personality of Bruce McLaren, right.
McLaren M8B Trio at Laguna Seca
Portrait of a Powerhouse: McLaren, challenged to retain its Can-Am dominance with nearly twice the number of races in 1969, stepped up by becoming the first team to bring a spare car. Most times it sat idle, although twice other drivers talked Bruce into letting them race it. Fellow New Zealander Chris Amon drove it as #3 here at Laguna Seca. But when McLaren\’s primary car crashed at Riverside (broken rear suspension), the spare was ready for him to win the season finale in Texas.
McLaren M8B at Texas Speedway
Seen at Texas, the M8B\’s tall airfoil was mounted directly on the rear wheel uprights (hub carriers), sending the downforce directly to the tires, not through the chassis. This meant the suspension springs could remain supple for good compliance over bumps.
Bruce McLaren, McLaren M8B engine, Edmonton
Bruce McLaren trained as an engineer, and his hands were always on his race cars. Here in the pit lane at Edmonton, he\’s blipping the throttles of the M8B\’s 430-inch, all-aluminum Chevy. The magneto ignition was chosen because it\’s simple and reliable. Also, note the rear wing\’s fore-aft bracing rod plus the vertical link by which the wing\’s angle can be manually adjusted. Tragically, this buoyantly friendly, deeply experienced, notably prudent driver would die the next summer in a testing accident.
Bruce McLaren, McLaren M8B, Laguna Seca Corkscrew
Typical View: Bruce McLaren flies his winged M8B off the Laguna Seca Corkscrew enroute to another victory. His natural engineering caution kept his team from adopting Chaparral\’s high, suspension-mounted rear airfoil for 3 years. They were just in time to make the most of them before such \’moving aerodynamic devices\’ were banned.

[Source: Pete Lyons]