In 1987, McLaren had struggled with a privateer TAG-Porsche engine financed in-house and built by Porsche. For 1988, the team secured Honda's 1.5L V6 turbo engines, which had been the best engine in Formula One since mid-1985. The engine's design and development was led by Osamu Goto. Most teams were shifting to naturally aspirated cars for 1988 because it was to be the final year for turbo engines before they were banned. Continuing with a turbo placed McLaren at a potential disadvantage: the MP4/4 would carry a fuel allowance of only 150 litres per race, while naturally aspirated cars ran without restriction. The 1988 car was a distinctly lower design than the previous year's MP4/3, requiring the drivers to adopt a more reclined, near-lying driving position due to FIA safety regulations stipulating that the top of a driver's helmet remain below an imaginary line drawn from the rollbar top to the cowling top.
The MP4/4 was produced from carbon fibre with assistance from Hercules Aerospace. Six chassis, numbered 1 through 6, were moulded for the season. The Honda RA168E engine produced 685 bhp (511 kW; 695 PS), specifically built for the reduction in turbo boost from 4.0 bar to 2.5 bar rather than being an upgrade of the 1987 specification engine. Honda's engine management team worked intensively on fuel consumption to avoid late-race retirements within the 150-litre limit. Senna's chief mechanic Neil Trundle confirmed the engines ran on a special fuel blend supplied by Shell, consisting of approximately 84% toluene and 16% methanol for qualifying and approximately 60–40 toluene/methanol for racing.
At Silverstone during the British Grand Prix, McLaren revised the aerodynamics by removing the turbo "snorkels" from the tops of the side pods. Although initially problematic, testing the week after the race confirmed the original imbalance had been caused by incorrect suspension settings rather than the removal of the snorkels, and the snorkels did not return for the remainder of the season.
For 1988, Ayrton Senna was signed at Alain Prost's suggestion to partner Prost on a three-year contract. The MP4/4 won 15 of the 16 races, including ten 1–2 finishes, and claimed 15 pole positions (13 for Senna and 2 for Prost). It holds the record for the highest percentage of laps led in a season at 97.3% (1,003 out of 1,031). The team won the Constructors' Championship with approximately three times as many points as runners-up Ferrari, scoring a then-record 199 points and finishing 134 points ahead of second-placed Ferrari.
The dominant run was interrupted once, at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza for round 12, when Senna crashed out of the lead with two laps remaining while lapping Jean-Louis Schlesser, who was making his only Formula One start for Williams in place of Nigel Mansell. With Prost already out after an engine failure — the only in-race engine failure McLaren suffered all season — Gerhard Berger claimed an emotional victory for Ferrari just a month after the death of Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari.
Senna also retired at Monaco, where he had built a 50-second lead by lap 66 before crashing into the barriers at Portier. The car retired four times in total across the season: Prost retired at Silverstone (handling) and Monza (engine), and Senna at Monaco and Monza. Beyond these retirements, the lowest finishing positions were a sixth in Portugal and a fourth in Spain, both for Senna, where fuel readout problems forced him to run slower than optimal; both races were won by Prost.
The top speed record for the season was set during qualifying at Hockenheim, where both Senna and Prost achieved 333 km/h (207 mph) on the 1.6 km straight into the forest.
At the end of the season, Senna took the Drivers' Championship over Prost under the best-11-scores rule: both drivers had 2 retirements, but Senna's 8 first-place finishes to Prost's 7 meant Senna prevailed despite Prost scoring more total points.
The MP4/4's win rate record stood until 2023, when it was broken by the Red Bull Racing RB19, which was also powered by a Honda V6 turbocharged engine and recorded a 95.45% win rate.
The MP4/4 was succeeded by the Honda V10-powered McLaren MP4/5 in 1989. A modified car designated MP4/4B was used as a test mule for Honda's new 3.5-litre V10 engine. According to several McLaren personnel including Steve Nichols, front-end designer Matthew Jeffreys, and chief mechanic Neil Trundle, the test mule was considered faster and arguably a better car than the subsequent MP4/5 and MP4/5B.
The McLaren MP4/4 was the last turbo-powered McLaren to win the World Constructors' Championship until the Mercedes-powered McLaren MCL38 won in the 2024 season.
All six MP4/4 chassis still exist. Chassis 1 and 6 remain owned by the McLaren Group; chassis 1 is normally on display at the McLaren Technology Centre. Chassis 5 is owned by Honda and is sometimes on display at the Honda Collection Hall at Motegi. Chassis 3 was relocated to Museo y Circuito Fernando Alonso in Asturias, Spain, and as of 2022 was in private ownership in the UK. Chassis 4 was returned to the factory at Woking and as of 2025 was owned by Nicholas and Shelley Schorsch as part of their Audrain Collection in Newport, Rhode Island.
The MP4/4 was voted the greatest Formula One car of all time by a panel of Formula One engineers and designers, and the greatest race car of the 20th century by Autosport readers.
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