McLarens The upcoming World Endurance Championship (WEC) hypercar is set to spawn a track-only customer version, and the British brand will make several tweaks to ensure it is as accessible as possible to amateur drivers.
The limited-edition customer car, codenamed Project: Endurance, is being developed alongside the full-fat WEC race car and will be available to buyers in late 2027, before introducing new customer experiences and track programs from 2028.
Neil Underwood, head of HyperTrack Cars at McLaren Automotive, said the customer car would, where possible, run parallel to the racing hypercar, but hinted at some of the differences that will arise.
“The idea is to make the customer car as similar as possible to the car we will drive in the WEC in 2027,” he said Daily Sparkz.
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“We looked long and hard at the proposal. WEC have a compelling requirement to run a hybrid system, it is obviously very complex and highly technical, and we decided that for this customer application we would remove the hybrid system from the car.”
Mr Underwood confirmed that both cars will use a twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 engine, but the WEC car will have a high-performance hybrid system in line with LMDh regulations and will produce around 680hp (500kW) of power – this is due to a competitive Balance of Performance (BoP) requirement.
The customer version, however, is powered exclusively by the V6 engine. Importantly, Mr. Underwood estimates that this application would develop “approximately 740 hp,” or about 545 kW.
“It has a number of advantages. Firstly, the maintenance costs and the actual ability to drive the car outside of our track program are really important, but it is also 150kg lighter, which obviously has an advantage,” he said.
“But we were really concerned with the customer-centric offering in terms of car use, ease of maintenance and ease of operation, which is why we chose this route.”
Otherwise, Mr Underwood confirmed that both cars will use “the same gearbox, suspension and braking system”.
“The only difference in the brakes is that on the race car it will use a brake-by-wire system and on the customer car we will use ABS (anti-lock braking system) to make the car more accessible and safe for our amateur drivers,” he said.
Interestingly, McLaren considers the Project: Endurance race car to be a successor to the legendary 1995 F1 GTR, as it is the first track-only McLaren derived from a real race car since then. The P1 GTR (2015) and the Senna GTR (2019) were not driven.
It’s also a completely different car to McLaren’s latest track toy, the Solus GT, as it has its origins in a highly regulated race car. In contrast, the Solus GT is the only McLaren car with a V10 engine and is described by Mr Underwood as “pretty old-fashioned”.
A key appeal of Project: Endurance is therefore its historical connection, which, along with a full-fledged, two-year customer experience program, is expected to generate healthy buyer interest.
“Owning this piece of history and having the opportunity to have a hypercar in its latest format that can outright win Le Mans is a pretty compelling argument,” he said.
“First came the racing program, and then as we looked at what we could offer our customers based on what we did with Solus, which was extremely successful, and how we could further develop our track program, we thought Project: Endurance would fit very well into that area.”
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