The McLaren Group, based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England, is a group of companies created by Ron Dennis, described by the International Herald Tribune as "a small conglomerate". The Group was originally formed from the team established by New Zealander Bruce McLaren in 1963 and is now focused around the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One Racing Team. The company hopes to expand its market from Formula One to manufacturing cars as it prepares to launch the successor to the McLaren F1, the McLaren MP4-12C. In recent years, the group has branched out to other precision manufacturing areas, such as motorized devices for the solar and wind industries.

Bruce McLaren started the Woking-based McLaren Formula One team in 1966.^{[citation needed]}Teddy Mayer took over direction of the group following Bruce McLaren's death while testing a Can-am series car in 1970. Mayer subsequently lead the McLaren to their first World Constructors' Championship in 1974 with Brazilian driver Emerson Fittipaldi, who also won the World Drivers' Championship that year.

Ronald "Ron" Dennis CBE (born 1 June 1947) is the executive chairman of McLaren Automotive and McLaren Group, and is also a significant shareholder in both companies. He was also the team principal of McLaren, the group's Formula One team, until 2009.

Since 1981, Dennis had been the team principal of the McLaren Formula One team, and was instrumental in transforming the outfit into a regular world championship contender. Constructors' and drivers' world championships were won with Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Häkkinen and Lewis Hamilton. Dennis has a "tense" relationship with, and a reported dislike for, former FIA president Max Mosley.

In January 2007, Dennis sold half of his 30 percent shareholding in the McLaren Group to the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company , leaving him with a 15 percent share. In 2009, Dennis, together with co-owners Mansour Ojjeh's TAG Group and the Bahraini Mumtalakat Holding Company, bought back Daimler AG's 40 per cent shareholding in a deal that will be concluded in 2011.

Martin Whitmarsh (born 29 April 1958) is the CEO of McLaren Racing, a subsidiary company of the McLaren Group and Chief Operating Officer of that group, as well as Team Principal of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, following Ron Dennis' retirement on 1 March 2009. Whitmarsh is also the chairman of the Formula One Teams Association and therefore has the responsibility of representing the F1 teams' interests.

Whitmarsh graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic (now University of Portsmouth) with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1980, and started work at British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) as a structural analysis engineer at its Hamble-le-Rice facility. He was promoted to an advanced composite structures research and development role and transferred to BAe's Weybridge facility. In 1988 he was promoted to the rank of Manufacturing Director and was put in charge of Hawk and Harrier airframe production. He left to join McLaren as Head of Operations in 1989.

In 1997, Whitmarsh was promoted to Managing Director, where he was responsible for managing the F1 operation and its partners and sponsors. This allowed Team Principal Ron Dennis to concentrate on other aspects of the McLaren Group. In April 2004, he was again promoted, this time to the position of CEO of the company's F1 operation.

Brian D. McLaren (born 1956) is a prominent Christian pastor, author, and speaker. He is a leading figure in the controversial emerging church movement, was recognized as one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" in 2005, and is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland.

Born in 1956, Brian McLaren graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with degrees in English (BA, summa cum laude, 1978, and MA, 1981). His academic interests include medieval drama, romantic poets, modern philosophical literature, and the novels of Dr. Walker Percy. He is also a musician and songwriter.

After several years of teaching English and consulting in higher education, he left academia in 1986 to become the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, a nondenominational church in the Baltimore-Washington region. The church has grown to involve several hundred people, many of whom were previously unchurched. In 2004 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.