McLaren’s decision as to whether or not it will sign up to the 2020 as yet unnamed ‘Hypercar’ regulations is set to come soon, and that with the regulations almost finalized, McLaren’s Zak Brown feels they could bring “glory years” back to Le Mans in the near future.
“I think they’ve got a lot of interest in Hypercar,” Brown said. “The direction they’re headed, the budget they’re talking about, I think that will be very successful.
“I could see 5-6 manufacturers, maybe not all in on day one.
“But the direction they’re headed, and you get a few announced, I could see some big days ahead of us at Le Mans, the glory years, if we want to call it that and with that would come sponsors and drivers.
Speaking to DSC during last weekend’s ELMS round at Spa, Brown explained that there’s a two-stage process to green-lighting the project.
“I have a meeting tomorrow (last Monday) at my office with Pierre Fillon, Gerard Neveu and (FIA Endurance Commission President) Richard Mille and I know we are now very close to seeing the final regulations and rules. Tomorrow is a day for us to respond to what they presented to us,” he said.
“It’s a two-step process, one step in October, and another in early December. It’s a project we’re definitely interested in, we like the direction of it. The WEC is a great series, McLaren has a great history in it, and our automotive business is going great, so the model they’re going with, with ‘hypercars’ and budget-sensitive racing, is attractive to us.
“Anything we do outside of Formula 1 will not pull on our Formula 1 resources,” Brown said.
“We have 4,000 employees, so if we were to go World Endurance racing or IndyCar racing, we may use some of the machinery and technology that we have within our Formula 1 team but guys working on our Formula 1 team are not going to go work on our WEC or if we do IndyCar.
“It’s not a strain of resources. It will be different people with a different setup and see if we can do both at the same time for sure.”
