After ten years at Porsche, Laurens Vanthoor is finding McLaren refreshingly different
Germans versus English, a manufacturer versus a race team. For Laurens Vanthoor, the change is the whole appeal.
Laurens Vanthoor has swapped one of the most successful partnerships of his career for a leap into the unknown, and he could not be happier about it. The Belgian has signed to lead McLaren's new Hypercar programme when it enters the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2027, ending a decade with Porsche, and the thing he keeps coming back to is how different it all feels.
A very different way of going racing
Vanthoor's summary of the change is blunt and cheerful. “Germans versus English, OEM mentality versus race team mentality, it has been quite different but also very refreshing,” he said. After ten years inside Porsche's works sportscar operation, a large and hugely professional manufacturer machine, McLaren represents something else entirely: a British race team going endurance racing rather than a carmaker running a motorsport department. The way the programme is structured, the way it raises its budget, and the mentality that runs through it are all unfamiliar to him, and that is precisely what he is enjoying.
The move, and the timing
McLaren has announced Vanthoor alongside Mikkel Jensen for its 2027 line-up in the MCL-HY Hypercar, but the switch is a phased one. Vanthoor will keep racing the Porsche 963 in the IMSA WeatherTech championship through the 2027 Michelin Endurance Cup rounds before moving exclusively to McLaren from 2028. What tempted him away from a decade of Porsche success was simple: the chance of an outright victory at Le Mans, the one prize that shapes decisions like this at the top of sportscar racing.
Another name for a stacked 2027 grid
Vanthoor's signing is another sign of how much momentum the top class of endurance racing has. McLaren is joining a Hypercar field that is already overflowing with manufacturers and is only getting deeper for 2027, with Ford also turning its first laps ahead of its own entry. Landing a driver of Vanthoor's calibre, a proven winner fresh from taking outright victory at the 24 Hours of Zolder, is exactly the kind of statement a new programme needs to make.
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There is a lot to like about this for a Belgian audience. Vanthoor is one of the country's genuine sportscar stars, and watching him take on a brand-new works Hypercar project, rather than seeing out his career in the comfort of a proven Porsche, is the sort of ambition that makes a driver worth following. His honesty about the culture shock is refreshing too. Most drivers would give a diplomatic non-answer about their new team, and instead he has cheerfully admitted that a British race team and a German manufacturer are simply different animals.
The gamble is real, of course. Leaving a winning machine for an unproven programme is a bet on potential over certainty, and new Hypercar projects do not always come good quickly. But Vanthoor is not chasing security, he is chasing an outright Le Mans win, and McLaren clearly offered him a more exciting route to it than another year of the familiar. If the MCL-HY is any good, this will look like a very smart move. Either way, it is a bold one, and those are always the more interesting to watch.
