Following the recent announcements of Pfaff Motorsports’ pending departure from IMSA and questions surrounding the future of Paul Miller Racing’s operation within the last six weeks, RLL Team McLaren has confirmed to DSC that it will stay the course in IMSA for 2027 and beyond.
Returning to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where RLL and previous partner BMW finished 1-2 overall in 2024, the team confirmed plans to continue to race the 720S GT3 Evo in 2027, while also embarking on a testing programme for McLaren’s next-generation GT3 car which is currently slated to launch in 2028.
“Overall, I think [this year has gone] not as well as I would like,” said Ricardo Nault, RLL’s vice president of IMSA operations. “We were hoping to sit on a few podiums along the way, and we had the chance to do so: A few missteps now and then, and a few mechanicals that were obviously unfortunate.
“Working with McLaren’s been really quite nice: They’re very open to input, and we communicate well with some of the other teams that run the cars in other series – but there’s still some challenges to it. I’m looking forward to the new GT3 car; we have one more year with this one, and we’ll start testing with the new car as well in preparation for 2028.”
Nault told DSC that the team will stay at one car for 2027, the final year of the current platform, while targeting an expansion to two cars for 2028. “We’re looking to do a one-car programme and do the testing on the 2028 car, and use the testing time to build the personnel to campaign two cars in 2028 with McLaren.
“And that can always change; we’re in discussions with people about running a second car, but with one last year left in this chassis, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense financially to campaign a second one (in 2027).”
RLL still harbors ambitions of returning to race in the GTP class after its separation from BMW. And with the MCL-HY nearing its 2027 FIA World Endurance Championship debut, Nault is still hopeful that RLL could one day campaign the new McLaren prototype in GTP.
“We’d like to go back to running the hypercars – and would love to do it with McLaren. But we’ve got to continue to build up this programme and make this strong enough to be able to campaign a GTP car properly,” he continued. “When we lost the BMW programme, a lot of good people went away, some with it, and some onto other endeavours. We’re rebuilding the whole staff to some degree, to make sure we can campaign a car at the highest level.”
It’s been a difficult year for the #59 RLL Team McLaren GT3 Evo. In eight races, the team’s best finish is only a sixth place at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (formerly Mosport).
But RLL has been pleased with the progress of its two rookie full-time drivers, Max Esterson and Nikita Johnson. Johnson in particular has been growing more and more comfortable in IMSA over the last few races, and the 18-year-old’s stock is only continuing to climb after he won the coveted Indy NXT (formerly Indy Lights) championship earlier this month.
“Both guys are doing really well,” Nault said of his team’s two young drivers. “They just keep on learning, keep on getting better with the car. They’re getting faster and faster, which is a positive for us.
“And the engineers are learning the car as well; we’ve got quite a different setup now than we did at Daytona, and it just keeps on progressing. We qualify pretty well, but we just haven’t been able to put it together during the race and get the results we want. But I think the whole team are all doing a good job learning the car and getting better.”
Nault confirmed that Esterson and Johnson will have a new co-driver for the upcoming Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, as McLaren factory GT3 driver Benji Goethe will step into the role of RLL’s third driver for Road Atlanta.
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
