McLaren “Highly Unlikely” to Commit to Hypercar Regs for 2020

Photo: McLaren

McLaren is “highly unlikely” to commit to the FIA and ACO’s new ‘Hypercar’ regulations for its launch season in 2020-21, according to McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, amid the company’s focus on improving its performance in Formula 1.

The British manufacturer, which has been among the half-dozen automakers in technical working group meetings to finalize the regs for the new, yet-to-be-named category, has been sizing up a potential factory FIA World Endurance Championship effort alongside its existing F1 program.

While still being “very engaged” in discussions and showing interest joining in the future, Brown has essentially ruled out an entry for 2020-21.

“I don’t think we would be ready for the first year of the new championship,” Brown said at this weekend’s F1 event at Circuit of The Americas, as quoted by Crash.net.

“It is under review. The rules have not been finalized.

“We have a sense of what they are and we are very engaged, we have a working group inside McLaren that are not on our Formula 1 activities reviewing it, and I believe the rules are going to be put in place by the end of the year.

“Then we’ll be in a position to take a decision if we’re going to enter and when we would enter, but highly unlikely it would be for the start of the 2020 calendar.”

The development comes on the heels of Friday’s announcement that McLaren will not mount a full-season program in IndyCar next year, in order to allocate the majority of its resources to F1, which it has been winless in since 2012.

Sportscar365 understands that WEC CEO Gerard Neveu and ACO President Pierre Fillon have been meeting with manufacturer executives in recent weeks, with the hopes of securing commitments ahead of release of the final set of regulations in early December.

Toyota and Aston Martin remain the leading candidates for the platform, along with continued interest from Ferrari, while BMW has been in recent meetings as well.

Plans to reduce overall season budgets from 25-30 million to 20 million Euro, meanwhile, is also understood to be in the works, with further information to be communicated next month.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John