McLaren Hypercar boss James Barclay has issued an update on the development on the challenger that will tackle the FIA World Endurance Championship next year.
The McLaren Hypercar Team reached a major program milestone on May 4 as its FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar completed its first on-track run as part of a successful rollout test.
At Autodromo Riccardo Paletti in Varano de’ Melegari, Mikkel Jensen drove the brand new McLaren MCL-HY out of the garage, becoming the first driver to turn a wheel of McLaren Racing’s first top category sports car since the Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR.
The test marks a significant milestone in the Woking-based outfit’s progress towards its eventual occupation of a place on the grid in WEC next season.
And to the media, including Motorsport Week, at the 6H of Spa-Francorchamps, project head James Barclay revealed the current state of development of the programme.
“So when projects like this start, you lay your plans out, and you have a timeline, and you don’t know what curveballs you’re going to get in that process, right, and of course, there are always curveballs, supply chain, all sorts of things can happen,” he said. “So the rollout on the week we planned, the start of the week we planned, 4th of May, was a really fantastic achievement for the team, so really pleased because it’s not easy to do it.”
“It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of management, and yeah, as planned, just after 9 o’clock we rolled out on track, so it was really, really cool, the car rolled out on EV, the internal combustion engine fired up, and we did our first lap, it’s very special. I’ve got it on my phone, and it’ll be a memory I’ll keep with the rest of the team for a long time.”
The newly formed WEC team, set to enter the championship as McLaren United AS for the 2027, with a possible IMSA entry in 2028.
“Our first full track test is at the end of the month, in Imola. And then our plan is to test across Europe, and the intent is to test in the Middle East as well. So, from that perspective, we’ve got a good test calendar, and our plan now is to hopefully get through that long road ahead.
“The operational side of the team, so our race engineer, our performance engineering side of the team, was there and in place, which is fantastic. Within a few weeks, we’ll be fully recruited, which is really, really positive. But our team size in total will be just under 100 staff in total for the program,” explained Barclay.
McLaren announces Laurens Vanthoor
McLaren have also announced their second driver for the programme, Laurens Vanthoor. The announcement came just days after the reveal and roll-out of the McLaren MCL-HY.
“Laurens joining us is a fantastic addition to the program, a driver with a huge amount of experience. And we’re really pleased and proud to have him on board. He will join our test program.
“And Porsche have been really fantastic and supportive. You know, they, like us, are racers and they also understand that their drivers have a wish and a desire to compete in WEC and Le Mans,” explained Barclay.
Vanthoor will be loaned out to McLaren for the 2027 WEC season, while simultaneously competing in IMSA with Porsche. Starting 2028, the Belgian will move to an exclusive role within McLaren.
The endurance driver market has opened up in the last few weeks with both Acura and Alpine announcing their departure from their endurance programmes. Barclay acknowledged the untraditional size of the current driver market, highlighting the opportunities that come with it.
“We have a driver pool, our McLaren Driver Development Programme pool, our own kind of contacts within the industry. But also, the United (Autosports) kind of driver pool is one that we have access to,” he said.
“Our final decisions on drivers will then kind of come as we go through this process. But for right now, you know, we all have a job to do. And that’s to go through our to-do list, go through each test. And the drivers we put in the test pool, we think, are really supportive to help us do that.”
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