McLaren Has Unveiled Its Le Mans Car, And You’ll Be Able To Own One*

Endurance racing is enjoying the purplest of patches right now, with manufacturers signing up to race in the top class at the World Endurance Championship left, right and centre. Following confirmation earlier this year, McLaren has unveiled its 2027 contender ahead of this year’s edition of the series’ flagship race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The car, styled in conjunction with McLaren’s road car division, will compete in the top Hypercar class, which itself is divided into two subsets of regulations. McLaren will enter under the more restrictive but more affordable LMDh ruleset, which sees constructors choose from one of four spec chassis and create their own powertrains and bodywork.

McLaren’s chassis comes from Italian constructor Dallara, while its powertrain will be a twin-turbo V6 augmented by a hybrid system. The car will be run in conjunction with British squad United Autosports, which also runs McLaren’s 720S GT3 in the lower rungs of the WEC.

The reveal of the car isn’t all, though: McLaren has also announced Project: Endurance, a scheme that’ll see a small number of private individuals be able to buy their own examples of the car and run them at track sessions around the world.

This is far from unheard of in the world of modern endurance racing – Ferrari has been running a similar programme for a while with its 499P Modificata, and just this week, Aston Martin unveiled the Valkyrie LM, a customer version of its screaming V12 Le Mans racer.

It’s not clear how closely related the Project: Endurance car will be to the works Le Mans racer, but those who buy into it will also get behind-the-scenes access to the race car’s development programme and, naturally, get the full VIP treatment at Le Mans in 2027.

McLaren will be joining an utterly stacked Hypercar grid, currently populated by Toyota, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Peugeot, Alpine, Porsche, BMW and Cadillac. Next year, Genesis will also join, with Ford entering alongside McLaren in 2027, and there’s also still the possibility of a WEC return for Lamborghini’s endurance programme.

There’s a bigger goal at play for McLaren, too: with the company now running teams in F1, IndyCar and the WEC, it’s aiming for motorsport’s Triple Crown – winning the Monaco Grand Prix, Indianapolis 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans – in a single year.