Optimum “Ready to Go” in Proposed McLaren LMGT3 Effort

Photo: Optimum Motorsport

Optimum Motorsport is “ready to go” for the LMGT3 class of the FIA World Endurance Championship next year according to team manager Bas Leinders, who admitted that “everything is in the hands of others” in regards to making its proposed program a reality.

The British squad is hopeful of gaining up to two McLaren 720S GT3 Evos in the new-for-2024 category, should the WEC grant entries to McLaren, and thus in turn the manufacturer award the longtime entrant spaces on the grid for next season.

Optimum, the parent team of Inception Racing, was represented on the WEC GTE-Am grid last year through a joint effort with Team Project 1 after it failed to secure its own entry with a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.

Brendan Iribe, Ollie Millroy and Ben Barnicoat instead raced a Porsche 911 RSR-19 for the majority of the season, in what was deemed as a valuable learning experience by the team.

“We have the experience in the team to run a car in the WEC,” Leinders told Sportscar365. “The only thing we didn’t do with Project 1 was a bit of logistics.

“All the rest, on the car we had all of our crew. There was only one mechanic which wasn’t ours. The engineers were ours, the data engineer was ours.

“I did all of the sporting side of that car. All of the strategy, etc, everything was ours.

“It was a team within a team but working with Project 1, which wasn’t easy. It was actually quite a difficult task because every organization works in different ways.”

Leinders said they could run either under the Optimum or Inception banners, or both should the team gain two entries.

He said Iribe, the backer behind the Inception organization, is currently “looking at it.”

“We’ve wanted to do it a few times now,” Leinders said. “We managed last year but in a McLaren it would be more attractive because he wants to race a McLaren at Le Mans.

“That’s why he did it last year, because we knew LMGT3 was coming.”

Leinders added: “We are ready to go. We want to do it. I think we’re ready to do it. We could have hit the start button yesterday.

“We definitely want to have a McLaren on the grid.”

When asked if they would be open to splitting the berth with another McLaren team, Leinders said it’s not their decision.

“Everything is in the hands of other people, the ACO and McLaren on different levels,” he said.

“We can run two cars and obviously that would be quite good, also logistically and organization-wise.

“But if there are two McLarens on the grid and it’s split between two teams, and we’re one of them, then yeah we will accept that as well and make it work.”

Leinders said a WEC effort would come in addition to its existing campaigns in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, International GT Open and Intelligent Money British GT Championship and not as a sacrifice to an existing program.

Fellow McLaren GT3 outfit Garage 59, meanwhile, is taking a wait-and-see approach to LMGT3 according to team principal Andrew Kirkaldy.

“Of course there’s an interest in it, but we need to have a bit of clarity about what’s going on,” he told Sportscar365.

“We obviously have an interest in WEC, and one of the main reasons for going from Pro-Am to Bronze Cup [in Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup] was to win the Le Mans entry.

“We’ve said to [McLaren] that we’re interested, but there’s a lot more to it than that in terms of how it’s going to be done and decided. And also, as a business, it has to make sense.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report

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