McLaren to decide on WEC entry in next six months

McLaren will make a decision on a possible entry to the FIA World Endurance Championship's premier class in the first half of 2019 as part of its wider review of its racing programmes.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has helped oversee an expansion of the British team's motorsport interests, highlighted by a return to the Indianapolis 500 in 2017, with an in-house entry to IndyCar's headline race already confirmed for 2019.

McLaren has been part of conversations with WEC and ACO officials regarding a possible return to the top tier of sports car racing, with a new hypercar-led class planned to replace the existing LMP1 category from the 2020-21 season.

Brown has previously confirmed McLaren would not be ready to join the WEC grid for the start of that season, but has said he would be opening to joining at the start of the 2021 calendar year or for the start of the '21-22 campaign.

Speaking at Autosport International last week in Birmingham, Brown gave an update on McLaren's WEC evaluations, saying a decision would need to be made within the next six months.

"We’re having a lot of meetings and it’s under review. It’s not inexpensive, the Hypercar, and we’ve got to make sure we get our F1 programme right first and foremost," Brown said.

"Of course we’ve dipped our toe in Indianapolis, and we’ll see if that leads to a more full-time effort. It’s under review.

"Emotionally McLaren would like to race in all these series but we need to make sure timing is right, finances, we’re investing a lot of money into F1, so we can't buy everything at the same time.

"We’ll make a decision in the first half of this year, because technically, if we’re going to ready for the start of the second season, we’ll have to make a decision one way or another.

"[It's] still very much under review."

McLaren famously won the 24 Hours of Le Mans back in 1995, and last raced at the Circuit de la Sarthe with a factory team in 1997.