Should this McLaren Speedtail GTR race at Le Mans?

You may have noticed that endurance racing isn’t really in its pomp right now. And that was before Covid hit. To counter the lethargy that manufacturers currently have for Le Mans and endurance racing in general, the ACO (the people who run the greatest circuit race in the world) have come up with a set of new rules, creating the ‘Hypercar’ class.

This is a good thing for many reasons – primarily because it's been created to neuter the crazy Richie Rich budgets teams were pouring into the furiously complicated ultra-hybrids we saw from the likes of Audi, Porsche and Toyota. These new cars are also going to be easier to build, cheaper to operate, better to race – oh, and they’ll be spawning road-going versions. Yep, homologation cars are back, baby!

Unsurprisingly, this has pricked the ears of a lot of manufacturers, with Toyota, Peugeot, Glickenhaus and ByKolles all confirmed. Though, there’s one outfit with Le Mans pedigree we’d really, really like to see return to La Sarthe: McLaren.

Turns out it’s not just us who had this thought. Creative genius Sean Bull has gone one better and done something about it; taking our whimsical wish and turning it into pseudo reality with the help of photoshop. Ladies and gents, this is the entirely unofficial McLaren Speedtail GTR.

When you read the new Le Mans rules and see what McLaren has in its locker, this doesn’t actually seem like too much of a pipedream. The foundations of the class play into the hands of the folks at Woking as there's a revised weight limit lowered to 1,100kg, a new power limit of 750bhp and the possibility of hybrid systems. That's a check, check, and check for the super slippery, three-seat hybrid hyper GT, the McLaren Speedtail. It’d also be the perfect central-seat successor to McLaren’s last Le Mans winner, the McLaren F1 GTR.

Obviously, technical information about this completely made-up McLaren currently doesn’t exist as this is the work of Sean’s brain rather than McLaren's, and – like we said – completely made-up. Given that Toyota has shown its hand with the 671bhp V6 turbo-powered GR010, don’t you think it’s time McLaren saddled up and rode into the new endurance hypercar wars? More importantly, if it does, which livery should it wear? Let us know below.

Images: @seanbulldesign