Lando Norris tests McLaren's Le Mans car the morning after Madrid
Norris tests McLaren's Le Mans car at Portimão on 14 September, one day after Madrid
Lando Norris will drive the McLaren MCL-HY at the Algarve International Circuit on Monday 14 September, a day after finishing third at the Madring. It is his first test in the car McLaren will race in the World Endurance Championship and at Le Mans from 2027, after two runs up the Goodwood hill in July. Norris has said twice, on the record, that he wants to race Le Mans.
Two Goodwood runs in July covered 1.87 km each. Portimão is a full development day
Norris's only previous laps in the MCL-HY were two runs up the 1.87 km Goodwood hillclimb on 10 July, as part of the car's public debut. Portimão is a different exercise: a 4.65 km circuit with the elevation changes and long corners endurance cars are set up for, and a day in which his feedback goes into a programme that has so far run a single chassis. McLaren has tested since May at Varano, Imola, Magny-Cours, Aragón and Silverstone, and homologation is targeted for the end of this season, after which the aerodynamic package is frozen. Norris gets his say before that stamp lands.
Norris said he would love to do Le Mans in Baku in 2025, and repeated it in May 2026
During the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend Norris told reporters he would love to take on Le Mans. In a McLaren video published in May 2026 he said he still wants to try other things, that McLaren is now going to Le Mans so he may do that at some point, and that he has not thought it all through. Neither was a commitment. Both were said by a driver whose McLaren contract runs to the end of 2030, so any Le Mans entry happens with Woking's blessing or not at all.
McLaren released Alonso to win Le Mans for Toyota in 2018, with a free weekend either side
McLaren has already answered the question of whether it lets its lead driver go endurance racing mid-season, and it answered yes for a rival's car. Fernando Alonso won the 24 Hours of Le Mans on 16 and 17 June 2018 in a Toyota TS050 Hybrid while he was a McLaren Formula 1 driver, a year after the team let him skip Monaco for the Indianapolis 500. The 2018 calendar made it simple: the Canadian Grand Prix was on 10 June and the French on 24 June, so Le Mans had a clear week on both sides. Nico Hülkenberg's 2015 win for Porsche, as a Force India driver, sat in the same kind of gap.
Le Mans 2026 finished on 14 June, the same afternoon as the Barcelona Grand Prix
That gap has closed. This year's 24 Hours ran on 13 and 14 June, and Toyota's win was sealed within hours of Lewis Hamilton winning the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on the same Sunday. No Formula 1 driver could have done both. The provisional 2027 calendar, which Formula 1 says it will confirm this autumn, drops Barcelona and puts Monaco on 6 June and a revived Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimão on 20 June. Le Mans is fixed for 12 and 13 June. The race weekend itself is free, but it becomes the middle of three consecutive race weekends, and the Le Mans test day traditionally falls on the Sunday a week before the race, which in 2027 is Monaco Sunday.
The MCL-HY: 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6, up to 707 hp, and a driver list still being unwound
The car Norris climbs into is an LMDh: a Dallara chassis, the spec hybrid system the class shares, and a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 that McLaren developed with AutoTecnica Motori rather than adapting a road engine, for up to 707 hp at the rear wheels and a minimum weight of 1,030 kg. It ran for more than 30 hours at Aragón in August without a stoppage. Mikkel Jensen and Laurens Vanthoor are the confirmed 2027 race drivers, with more names signed but not yet announced. Norris is not on that list, and McLaren has not said he will be. Monday buys the reigning world champion's opinion on a car with a few months of aerodynamic freedom left.
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McLaren has already let its best driver race Le Mans in the middle of a Formula 1 season, and it did so for Toyota. Letting him do it in its own car is the easier decision, not the harder one. Zak Brown built the MCL-HY programme around the Triple Crown story, and the only current McLaren driver who has already won Monaco is Norris. The obstacle is a calendar that in 2026 put Le Mans and a grand prix on the same afternoon, and that in 2027 puts the Le Mans test day on Monaco Sunday and a Portuguese Grand Prix six days after the chequered flag at La Sarthe.
Formula 1 publishes its 2027 calendar this autumn. If Portimão stays on 20 June, Norris does not race Le Mans in 2027, whatever he says in Portugal on Monday, because no team hands its lead driver three consecutive race weekends in two categories. Our expectation is that his name is missing from the entry list the ACO publishes in early 2027, and that the first Norris Le Mans is 2028, with a homologated car and a calendar McLaren has had time to lobby.
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