Garage 59 Shuffles Lineups in Two-Car McLaren Effort

Garage 59 has shuffled its driver lineups for GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS this year with factory drivers Marvin Kirchhoefer and Dean MacDonald uniting at the wheel of its No. 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo for a full-season attack.

German racer Kirchhoefer was twice victorious in the Sprint Cup last year alongside Benjamin Goethe en route to a third place finish in the standings, but the latter has swapped places with MacDonald to instead pilot Garage 59’s Gold Cup entry for this year.

Kirchhoefer and MacDonald will be joined in the top class for the Endurance Cup events by fellow McLaren works driver Joseph Loake, who impressed in his first season in sports cars last year with Garage 59.

Kirchhoefer described the combination as “the strongest McLaren lineup we’ve seen in a long time.”

“It feels great to go into the new GT World Challenge season with a full McLaren factory driver lineup,” he added.

“Both Dean and Joseph were outstanding last year. Considering Joseph was in his rookie season of GT3 racing, he was very fast and super consistent so I’m excited to see his progression continue.

“Dean is a good friend of mine so I’m very happy to finally be sharing a car with him. I think we have an exciting season ahead of us.”

The team has slimmed down to a two-car lineup for this season and will field just one other car, in the Gold Cup class.

It comes amid Garage 59’s new venture in the LMGT3 class of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Louis Prette and Tom Fleming will continue their partnership from the second half of last year for a full campaign while Goethe will feature in the No. 58 machine for the Endurance Cup rounds.

“We finished last season on a high with several class wins and an overall victory in Barcelona [in the Endurance Cup alongside Macdonald and Adam Smalley], so the momentum is definitely there,” said Prette.

“Teaming up with Tom across both Sprint and Endurance looks very promising— we already showed strong pace together in Sprint — and having Benji join us for the Endurance rounds makes it feel like we’ve got a really strong lineup.”