The car featured distinctive 'horn' wings fitted to the bodywork behind the overhead air intake in an attempt to claw back as much downforce as possible lost through the FIA's rule changes.

His stand-ins for those 2 races, Pedro de la Rosa for Bahrain and Alexander Wurz for San Marino finished fifth (including the fastest lap) and third respectively.

[6] McLaren went into 2005 with renewed major sponsorships such as Mobil 1, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Siemens, Hugo Boss, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, Schüco and Henkel Corporation.

The team also received new sponsorship with Johnnie Walker replacing West as title sponsor from the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards due to the tobacco advertising ban in the European Union on 31 July 2005.

[9][10] (key) (results in bold indicate pole position) † – Driver did not finish the Grand Prix, but were classified as they completed more than 90% of the race distance.