Garage 59 Ready for “Day One at School” as it Makes Series Debut

Garage 59 co-owner Chris Goodwin says that learning the nuances of the FIA World Endurance Championship is the biggest challenge as the McLaren squad prepares to make its series debut at Imola this weekend.

The long-time McLaren team has taken over from United Autosports in operating a pair of McLaren 720S GT3 Evos in the LMGT3 ranks as that outfit prepares to enter the WEC’s Hypercar division with McLaren’s new LMDh challenger next year.

Garage 59 has achieved multiple race wins and titles in the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS and its predecessor series over the years and Goodwin, whose own connections with McLaren first began in 1997 when he raced an F1 GTR, describes progressing into the WEC as a “great move” for the squad.

“We run McLaren GT3 cars in other series and we do well with that but the nuances [of the WEC] are many and we’re just trying to make sure we haven’t missed anything,” he told Sportscar365. “There’s a lot of tiny, tiny differences.

“We realised we don’t know what we don’t know yet, this is day one at school so we will see how we go through the weekend and will find out along the way there probably have been a few things we didn’t really think correctly about.”

In terms of those nuances, Goodwin – who co-owns the team with Andrew Kirkaldy and WEC driver Alexander West – said the nuances start with not being able to use a plastic water bottle and then progress to “everything from there.”

“The attention to detail – you have to be on your game on every little detail on track off track, in the garage, in the paddock,” he said. “And I love all of that. I came from the Ron Dennis era of McLaren so we love attention to detail. Now we’re in an environment where everyone has to have that.”

Goodwin said that entering the WEC brings many benefits to the team, including helping with recruitment, and this has a knock-on effect in boosting its other programs.

“We have a fairly ambitious new facility we’re finishing in Northampton that will house everything that we do – GT World Challenge cars, WEC cars, a huge number of old Formula 1 cars and Le Mans cars and many not that old actually,” added Goodwin.

The Garage 59 McLarens have enjoyed an encouraging start to the Imola weekend with competitive times in the Prologue and free practice and Goodwin said that is testament to the effort the team has put in to prepare for its WEC debut.

“Everything’s possible but we don’t know how likely it is,” he said in terms of results.

“We’re here because we earned it. We were asked to take this on and there were other teams that could’ve been chosen to do so.

“But we were the strongest option because of our performance in other things. I think if we can apply that then why not can we do as well in this as other series, but we don’t underestimate the task.”

McLaren factory driver Marvin Kirchhoefer has competed with the squad for the past six seasons in various categories – and is also making his WEC debut this weekend – and has been impressed by Garage 59’s preparations.

“I’m enjoying my time here,” he told Sportscar365. “It’s my first year in WEC and it’s very nice when you’re 32 years old and you can call yourself a rookie again – it makes you feel five years younger!

“The team have done a lot of preparation to get themselves into all the procedures because there are a lot of new things.

“The team has been very successful last year in GT World Challenge, and I think it was the fair step for them to go into this new chapter.

“There’s still a lot of things we need to learn throughout the season – I think we will be competitive but it’s really hard to understand where we will be at.”