Does F1 play the wrong anthem when McLaren win? Lawson is only half-right · RaceFans

Liam Lawson is not happy the British national anthem rings out whenever McLaren wins out.

“It makes no sense,” he told Red Flags recently. “It’s a New Zealand team. The name is still McLaren.”

McLaren was founded by Bruce McLaren in 1963 and entered F1 three years later. But while its founder, like Lawson, is a New Zealander, the team is based in the UK and its victories are celebrated with the British national anthem.

“Red Bull play the Austrian national anthem and the team’s based in the UK,” Lawson continued. “McLaren is based in the UK, but it’s a New Zealand team.”

“It’s completely bullshit is what it is, honestly,” he concluded. “Especially if you’re from New Zealand. Because Bruce McLaren is an absolute legend.”

Lawson is of course right that Red Bull, based in Milton Keynes founded and funded by an Austrian, marks its victories with renditions of Bundeshymne der Republik Österreich. Except, that is, their breakthrough victory at Shanghai in 2009, where the British anthem was erroneously performed.

But some teams continue to prioritise location over ownership. For an example of that, Lawson should look no further than his own team. RB is also owned by Red Bull, but principally based in Faenza in Italy, and marked its most recent win in 2020 (when it was called AlphaTauri) with Il Canto degli Italiani.

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It’s not unheard of for teams to change which anthem they prefer. After Italian fashion brand Benetton took over the British Toleman team in 1986, they marked their first victory later that year with the British national anthem, on the instruction of none other than Luciano Benetton himself. They later switched to using the Italian anthem.

But there is no hard-and-fast rule to which is ‘correct’. Lawson could just as well argue that, given the ownership structure of McLaren, the appropriate anthem to perform would be a mash-up composing two-thirds of the national anthem of Bahrain and one-third America’s Star-Spangled Banner, in deference to Mumtalakat and MSP Sports Capital respectively.

Bruce McLaren was no doubt proud to represent his country as the first beneficiary of its ‘Driver to Europe’ scheme, which he won in 1958. But when he became a constructor five years later he didn’t call it ‘Team New Zealand’ in the same way Enzo…