Leonardo Fornaroli, the 21-year-old who won the FIA Formula 3 title in 2024 and Formula 2 in 2025, will race McLaren’s MCL-HY Hypercar in the 2027 World Endurance Championship, Le Mans included.
The FIA WEC announced the signing on October 19. Fornaroli is McLaren’s Formula 1 reserve driver, and he joins Mikkel Jensen, Laurens Vanthoor and Alex Lynn. The championship describes a “six-strong driver line-up” that is now two-thirds complete.
Neither that announcement nor any McLaren release we’ve read says how many cars the team will enter. Six drivers would fill two cars at three apiece, but nobody has put a car count in writing.
If you’ve seen recent headlines saying McLaren is “officially” returning to Le Mans, that part is 18 months old. McLaren Racing confirmed its 2027 Hypercar entry on April 10, 2025, with CEO Zak Brown’s two-word statement: “We’re back.” What has changed since is a named car, a test program and a driver roster that keeps filling in.
The four drivers
Vanthoor signed on May 8. He is the 2024 Hypercar drivers’ champion, spent a decade with Porsche, and finished second overall at Le Mans in 2025. McLaren’s release notes that Porsche Penske Motorsport’s WEC program has ended.
Lynn, 33, was named on October 15 and moves over after finishing his current WEC season with Cadillac Hertz Team Jota. Jota has already named its 2027 Cadillac line-up. Lynn took outright pole for the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans and won the GTE Pro class there in 2020.
Jensen is the McLaren works driver who has been in the car since testing began in May, alongside development drivers Gregoire Saucy and Richard Verschoor and United Autosports’ Ben Hanley. Fornaroli, per the WEC, is one of only five drivers to win the F3 and F2 titles back to back.
Lando Norris has driven the car too. McLaren says he ran 38 laps of Portimão on September 14, about 177 km, during the MCL-HY’s fifth track test. Team principal James Barclay said the team looks forward to welcoming him back “soon.” Norris is not on the line-up, and McLaren hasn’t said he will be. Whether his Formula 1 schedule leaves room for Le Mans is a question we’ve looked at before.
The spec sheet
McLaren revealed the MCL-HY on May 4. It is built to LMDh rules around a carbon fiber monocoque, with a twin-turbocharged V6 and a hybrid MGU sending “up to 520kW (707PS)” to the rear axle. Minimum weight is 1,030 kg.
Those two numbers are the FIA’s own: its Hypercar explainer sets maximum power at 520kW and minimum weight at 1,030 kg for the class. They describe the rulebook’s limits. What any Hypercar runs at a given race is set by Balance of Performance.
The release never gives the race car’s engine displacement. The figure, 2.9 liters, appears only in the paragraph about the customer track car, which uses “the” 2.9-liter twin-turbo racing engine.
It also leaves out the chassis builder. McLaren’s June 2025 announcement said Dallara produces the car to a McLaren design. The word Dallara does not appear in the May 2026 reveal. That 2025 release also named the outfit McLaren United AS; it now races as the McLaren Hypercar Team, with Barclay as team principal.
The customer car makes more power
The track-only MCL-HY GTR, sold through McLaren’s Project: Endurance program, drops the mandated LMDh hybrid system and runs on the combustion engine alone. McLaren quotes it at “circa 730PS,” about 23PS more than the most the race car is allowed to make, and says it weighs less.
Buyers get a two-year, six-event program with coaching, a pit crew and race engineers. Deliveries start toward the end of 2027. McLaren has not published a price or a production number. The GTR badge previously went on the F1, P1 and Senna.
The 2027 grid
McLaren is not the only new name. Ford also enters Hypercar in 2027, and its car is already testing. Porsche Penske Motorsport, the team Vanthoor won his title with, has ended its WEC program.
The WEC’s own history of McLaren’s last top-class appearance depends on which article you read. Its April 2025 story said McLaren had been absent from the top class since 1998. Today’s Fornaroli announcement says McLaren’s most recent participation at the highest level was the 1995 outright win, when JJ Lehto, Yannick Dalmas and Masanori Sekiya won Le Mans in an F1 GTR on the car’s first attempt.
What comes next
McLaren plans to homologate the MCL-HY this winter. The 2027 season opens with the Qatar 1812km on March 27, and Le Mans runs June 12-13. Two seats are still open.
Who should get them: another proven sports car winner like Vanthoor and Lynn, or another graduate of McLaren’s own junior program like Fornaroli?
Sources: FIA WEC announcement of Leonardo Fornaroli’s signing (Oct. 19, 2026); McLaren Racing releases of April 10, 2025, June 13, 2025, April 24, 2026, May 4, 2026, May 8, 2026, June 12, 2026, Sept. 14, 2026 and Oct. 15, 2026; FIA, “Hypercar explained”; FIA WEC announcements of McLaren’s (April 10, 2025) and Ford’s 2027 Hypercar entries.
Lead Photo: McLaren Racing (manufacturer press image)
The post McLaren’s Le Mans Hypercar Lineup Reaches Four of Six With F2 Champion Leonardo Fornaroli appeared first on Backfire Racing.