On the heels of the announcement that McLaren Automotive has chosen United Autosports in a bid to compete in the LMGT3 class of the FIA World Endurance Championship last week, the super car manufacturer h as partnered with Pfaff Motorsports to campaign a 720S GT3 Evo in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD PRO class. It will mark McLaren’s first GTD PRO effort in the WeatherTech Championship, where it before had a single full-time customer team (Inception Racing) in GTD. It’s unlikely that the timing of the announcements is coincidence.
“The impetus is really the excitement around the brand and where they’re heading,” explained Pfaff Motorsports General Manager Steve Bortolotti. “We believe there’s so much opportunity for growth within McLaren brand both on the retail side of our automotive business, but also in the motorsport landscape as well. Ultimately when the chips are on the table, that was a deciding factor – McLaren being a true partner of ours, we weren’t just like any other customer, which is something we’ve been striving to achieve for our program for a number of years. But then also looking ahead to the future what may be coming down the pipeline. Obviously there’s no guarantees in this sport that anything goes the way you want it to, but making sure that we’re positioned appropriately for any future opportunities that may come our way.”
This weekend’s Petit Le Mans will be the final race for the Plaid Porsche, and Bortolotti says plaid won’t be a prominent feature on the Canadian team’s McLaren livery, expected to be a bit more in McLaren’s corporate vein. It’s a big switch for a team that has raced Porsches for the entirety of its tenure in the WeatherTech Championship. It’s no secret that the latest iteration of the Porsche 911 GT3 R, based on the 992 platform, races very differently than its predecessors and the teams racing it have not always had an easy time of it. Pfaff, which earned the GTD title in 2021 and the inaugural GTD PRO championship last season, only has a single victory in 2023 in the Twelve Hours of Sebring, earned on a risky strategy call.