Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

S12 E5: McLaren’s 1994 nightmare with Peugeot

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Episode notes

McLaren’s single season with Peugeot in F1 goes down as a year to forget in the team’s great history. But even though the short-lived alliance didn’t enjoy much success, there was plenty going on to make it worth the Bring Back V10s treatment.

Glenn Freeman, Ben Anderson, and Edd Straw revisit how McLaren tried to adapt to life after Ayrton Senna, and how it nearly coaxed his great rival Alain Prost out or retirement to spearhead its new era. We also dive into Martin Brundle’s gamble to land the seat Prost rejected.

We couldn’t possibly dig into every Peugeot engine failure from that season, but we do stop off along the way at the most famous ones, and look at the fallout behind the scenes after Brundle’s car burst into flames at the start of the British GP. 

We then get into how quickly the relationship fell apart, with McLaren finding a way out of its Peugeot deal to link up with Mercedes for 1995, to the benefit of Jordan.

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