McLaren is trying to make its business case for sports car racing

McLaren is not a central fandom of mine, but I do like how they roll. Who knows how profitable any of this is, but they seem like the company that takes motor racing the most seriously in the sense that it’s the reason they exist, and if anything their road cars are derived from their race cars rather than the other way around. They’re also some of the best performing and driver-focused road cars in the world, so they’re pulling it off.

This year, we’ll see their LMDh hypercar on track ahead of its racing debut next year, and McLaren execs are doing some press about how they’re justifying this effort. They’re calling it Project Endurance. They’re going to make and sell track-only consumer versions and host driving events with them, that sort of thing. Obviously this is for the mega-elite — McLaren’s GT cars were already very high-end, and this is going up-market — but maybe it’s also the kind of thing that convinces the mega-elite to stay invested in motorsports.