Bring Back V10s: McLaren’s 1994 nightmare with Peugeot
The Race F1 Podcast
The Race Media Ltd
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2025
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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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Transcript
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| 1:11.1 | The Athletic. |
| 1:21.0 | McLaren started a new era in 1994 with Eyrton Senegone and a new works engine partner |
| 1:31.0 | as it welcomed Perjo into F1 for the first time. |
| 1:34.6 | Hopes were high or modest, depending on who you talk to, and despite some early promise, |
| 1:39.0 | the partnership became most famous for the red and white cars pulling up at the side of the track |
| 1:43.3 | with smoke and or fire coming out of the side of the track with smoke and |
| 1:44.4 | or fire coming out of the back of them. In the end, things went so badly that McLaren |
| 1:49.5 | wanted out of the deal, and it had to find another team to take Perjose fragile, underpowered |
| 1:55.4 | engine so it could begin a new era with Mercedes. I'm Glenn Freeman, and to help me revisit the often disastrous McLaren-Persho partnership, |
... |
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