The McLaren recruit chasing his Le Mans 24 Hours dream

A young Laurens Vanthoor, straight out of Formula 3, scribbled down a clear road map for his career ahead in sportscar racing. His hopes and aspirations were laid out on a napkin, but the word McLaren wasn’t written upon it.

Yet in joining the British racing giant as it gears up for its return to the pinnacle of sportscar racing in the World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar division next year, the Belgian is remaining true to the plan formulated in a Brussels restaurant in 2011. The reason is simple: the final entry was ‘Outright Le Mans 24 Hours victory’. 

Vanthoor is now 35 and has an impressive sportscar CV that includes multiple titles, not least his 2024 World Endurance Championship crown with Porsche and victories in the GT3 endurance classics at Spa, the Nurburgring and Bathurst. But the nearest he has come to winning overall at the most important sportscar race of them all was the close second last year with Porsche Penske Motorsport.  

“I want to win Le Mans, and Porsche stopped, so I started looking at other options. Everyone knows my story; I dream about Le Mans and winning it overall day and night” Laurens Vanthoor

The anguish felt within Porsche over its near miss on the Circuit de la Sarthe in 2025 was implicated in its withdrawal from the WEC for this year. That decision, in turn, was the motivator for Vanthoor’s latest career move, though one with a twist: he’ll be racing the new MCL-HY LMDh for McLaren United AS in the WEC next year while remaining on the books at Porsche to compete in the five endurance rounds of the IMSA SportsCar Championship in one of the Penske 963 LMDhs.

Come 2028, he’ll be a full-time McLaren driver, which explains why he doesn’t like the term “loan deal” bandied around on his announcement by McLaren back in May. He suggests it is more correctly called a “transition”. 

His motivation to start looking beyond Porsche, a manufacturer he joined for the 2017 season, was simple: “I want to win Le Mans, and Porsche stopped, so I started looking at other options. Everyone knows my story; I dream about Le Mans and winning it overall day and night.” 

McLaren MCL-HY LMDh racks up mileage in four-day mid-September test at Portimao in Portugal

Photo by: McLaren

Porsche’s WEC bombshell was dropped at the start of October 2025, six months after McLaren had finally bitten the bullet and committed to a top-level sportscar return. Vanthoor admits that its announcement piqued his interest. “I remember saying to my wife, Jacqueline, that driving for McLaren would be a cool thing to do if ever I had to leave Porsche or decided to leave,” he says.  

Rumours of an overhaul of Porsche’s LMDh programme started post-Le Mans, speculation that the axe was hovering above the WEC participation growing as the summer waned. “I got a funny feeling – I thought if I am going to do something, I need to react quickly,” he recalls. “I started listening and talking to see what else might be available.” 

McLaren was his number one target from the get-go. “I probably spoke to half the teams in the paddock,” he reveals. “There were multiple good options, but I always made it clear to McLaren that they were my number one choice. Maybe it wasn’t the strongest negotiating tactic, but I was very clear in saying that this is what I wanted to do.” 

“Porsche sets the highest standard in endurance racing; there are not many spots to replace that – in my opinion that could only be McLaren or Ferrari” Laurens Vanthoor

Vanthoor explains that he needs to wear the badge with pride when he goes racing. “Porsche sets the highest standard in endurance racing; there are not many spots to replace that – in my opinion that could only be McLaren or Ferrari,” he says, without revealing whether or not there were any discussions with the latter. “I need to feel proud of the name on my chest. That was important for me.” That sentiment, he goes on, means that the “best people” will be attracted to the team. “All those factors made me want to be here,” he adds.  

The dual deal he has at the moment, he jokes, is “a bit like having two wives”, but he reckons next year he’ll be living the dream twice over: “If as a race car driver you are in Mooresville with Penske and you go for lunch with Roger, and then you fly to London. You change into an orange T-shirt, walk into the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking and see Zak Brown and all the F1 people, and you go back to your hotel and think those were two nice days. For sure there’s stress, but for your inner child who loves racing, it’s hard to top that.”  

Getting a deal across the line whereby he would race with two manufacturers, both in LMDh machinery, in the same season wasn’t easy. “It was way more complicated than it sounds,” explains Vanthoor, who will be in the last year of his contract cycle with Porsche in 2027. “Who allows what, who has priority over what in terms of PR and sponsors… there was a lot of stuff involved in those agreements.” 

Walking into McLaren HQ as a works driver while also racing a Porsche, “for your inner child who loves racing, it’s hard to top that”

Photo by: McLaren

Vanthoor therefore thanks Porsche for allowing it to happen: “I’m really grateful to Porsche that they were open-minded with this – they know my masterplan, my dream.”  

Audi was similarly obliging when Vanthoor started thinking about leaving the manufacturer with which he had started his sportscar career. After revealing that he was in contact with sister marque Porsche late in 2016, Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich did more than encourage him to make the switch. He picked up the phone to Frank-Steffen Walliser, who headed up GT racing at Porsche. “The next day I received my contract to join Porsche Motorsport,” recalls Vanthoor. 

He reckons that his career was “stalling” at Audi, at least in terms of moving towards the targets scrawled upon the napkin together with his early mentor, the late JG Mal-Voy, president of the Belgian Audi Volkswagen Club. The plan involved taking finance to the Belgian WRT Audi team in year one in 2012 to try to impress and land a place on the German manufacturer’s roster of factory GT3 drivers.

“I’d won every championship and all the big races we were competing in – there was nothing more for me to achieve. I didn’t want to spend my whole career in GT3” Laurens Vanthoor

Step one was achieved after only a year courtesy of a strong season in the FIA GT1 World Championship aboard one of WRT’s R8 LMS ultras. Next on the list was for Vanthoor to establish himself there. He certainly did that: not only did he win all the big enduros, he took titles in the FIA GT Series, the Blancpain Endurance Series and the Intercontinental GT Challenge, and there was also a victory in the prestigious GT World Cup at Macau. The goal was then to move up to its LMP1 squad in the WEC.  

“I was pushing to get there, but let’s say there was a queue in front of me,” he remembers. “I was about to get a test when they stopped the third car.” When Audi, together with Porsche, parked their extra entries for Le Mans in the aftermath of the dieselgate scandal for 2016, that queue lengthened. It was time to move on: “I’d won every championship and all the big races we were competing in – there was nothing more for me to achieve. I didn’t want to spend my whole career in GT3.” 

That explains why he reached out to Porsche, more with a view to joining its factory programme with the mid-engined 911 RSR than its LMP1 WEC campaign with the 919 Hybrid. “LMP1 was never in the conversation; I knew it was unrealistic,” he says. “I wanted to move into a true factory environment and be part of the RSR programme to develop as a driver. I knew I had to focus on the RSR for at least a couple of years, and then they stopped P1.”  

Celebrating 2024 WEC title with Porsche Penske Motorsport team-mates Lotterer and Estre

Photo by: Philippe Nanchino / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images

Vanthoor had left one manufacturer that quit the prototype ranks shortly after he signed for one that would do the same less than a year after he put pen to paper. “But as soon as the whole LMDh conversations started rolling, that was priority number one,” he reveals.  

So far Vanthoor’s successes driving the 963 encompass the WEC triumph with Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer in 2024, as well as back-to-back victories at the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours IMSA rounds the following year, and last month a victory at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

He describes the WEC title as “the biggest achievement of my career so far”. It would run his sought-after Le Mans victory close: “A few years ago if you’d asked anyone about the importance of the championship versus Le Mans, we’d all have picked Le Mans. Now with the WEC being so big and successful, it’s close. But in the ideal world you have both, right?” 

“I was setting up the trophies the other day with my wife, and she asked, ‘Doesn’t it count?’” It’s still a class victory, not an overall. But it is still important to me because at the time I was a GT driver” Laurens Vanthoor

The trophy cabinet in Vanthoor’s new mancave also includes silverware for winning IMSA titles with the RSR in GT Le Mans and GT Daytona, from 2019 and 2021 respectively. He has also won the Spa blue riband enduro for a second time with Porsche and scored a first Bathurst 12 Hour victory. And there’s a trophy for winning GTE Pro at Le Mans in 2018 driving with Estre and Michael Christensen. But if Vanthoor still had the napkin, it wouldn’t allow him to put a tick against the Le Mans box.  

“I was setting up the trophies the other day with my wife, and she asked, ‘Doesn’t it count?’,” he says. “There might have been 17 factory entries in GTE Pro, so the level was probably higher than LMP1, but I had to tell her that it doesn’t matter. It’s still a class victory, not an overall. But it is still important to me because at the time I was a GT driver.” 

As for the runner-up trophy from Le Mans 2025, “the plan is that one day that one is going to be replaced by one for first place”. Which explains why Vanthoor will be back in the WEC paddock next year wearing papaya orange.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the November 2026 issue and subscribe today.

Last year’s painful Le Mans near miss in #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963

Photo by: Stefano Facchin / Alessio Morgese / NurPhoto via Getty Images