Marvin Kirchhöfer, a factory driver for the McLaren GT3 programme, is making his debut this weekend at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Speaking exclusively to Motorsport Week, Kirchhöfer summarised his Le Mans experience so far, along with a wish to end up in a Hypercar programme in the future.
After winning the 6 Hours of Spa in the LMGT3 category, the Garage 59 #10 entry heads to Le Mans with most of the entry making their debut at the French classic. Antares Au, the bronze-rated driver of the lineup, debuted in 2025 with Porsche.
In qualifying on Wednesday, the #10 didn’t make it into Hyperole, finishing 17th. Kirchhöfer explained their frustrating start to the week in Le Mans: “To be honest, it’s not as good as we hoped. Because we missed out on HyperPole, which obviously is always the first kind of goal that you want to achieve. The next morning, we found out that actually the poles that had been disqualified.
“So Peter Dempsey, they got disqualified for some infringement. So we’re P16. It is what it is. It’s a 24-hour race. Qualifying doesn’t really matter, but it’s just an amazing track to be out on, low fuel, new tyres.
“So that’s just the frustrating part. We seem to not be as competitive as we would like to be compared to some other manufacturers. But it’s still early days to really say where we are.
“However, we can definitely tell we don’t look as strong as we were in the first two rounds. Just due to the nature of the car, lacking some straight-line speed compared to pretty much all the grid. We are more like mid-pack to further down.
“And that’s obviously quite hard in Le Mans when you don’t have a straight line.”
In terms of first experiences of the nature of Le Mans, Kirchhöfer highlighted the differences in multiclass racing in comparison to the Nürburgring 24H and the Rolex 24 in Daytona, where the German driver has competed before.
“The excitement is obviously very high. I generally enjoy multi-class racing, and I only know this obviously from Daytona with the LMP2s and the GTPs. Yes, Nürburgring has also multi-class racing, but it’s a bit different.
“It feels different. So I’m very excited for it. I think it’s going to be a very cool experience. And I just really hope that with clean execution as a team, we can make it a great result as well.”
Kirchhöfer joined McLaren as a factory driver for the 2022 season, having found success across many different GT racing series since. Coming to Le Mans as a rookie, a status he is no longer used to, his expectations of the event varied: “So far, I would say it’s all kind of like what I expected, but I do enjoy the track itself a lot. Not that I’m surprised about it, but you don’t get it quite often nowadays that you go to a track and you can’t wait for the next session to be in the car.
“I’m not a massive fan of free practice and all these things. I like to race because it’s something you go for. Qualifying as well, obviously, but practice sessions are usually a bit not the most entertaining. But even here, the free practice sessions were really, really enjoyable from my side.
“And I would have loved to have done even more laps than I did. So that’s why I’m definitely really, really hyped for the race.”
When asked whether racing a Hypercar is something that he would be interested in, given that McLaren is set to join the grid with their MCL-HY LMDh next season, he replied: “Of course. I mean, I think I can speak for all of us GTLM drivers. We all want to be in a hypercar eventually.
“Right now, obviously, the focus is clearly on what we need to achieve this weekend. But yeah, ultimately, that’s the long-term goal. We’ll see.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Marvin Kirchhöfer.
Discussion about this post