Following on from the intense development programme working with McLaren and their new McLaren 720S GT3 race car, the Woking based manufacturer had selected the Abu Dhabi 12 Hour race to be the showcase first race event for the World Famous racing brand’s new homologated GT3 race car.
The event was chosen partly due to the demands of the iconic Yas Marina’s Formula One circuit layout and also due to where the event fell in the racing calendar, situated in the winter break which is nicely ahead of the 2019 European racing season – giving the manufacturer plenty of time to show case it’s world class product and undoubtedly attract new customer’s before the new season start.
Given the importance of the event, McLaren chose a strong factory team comprising of world class engineers, technicians and racing drivers – of which MPS were proud to be selected as data and systems engineers.
With strong competition consisting of highly experienced racing teams, their star drivers and of course their highly developed GT3 machines, MPS and McLaren were pleased to dominate all of the practice and qualifying sessions for the first event with the new car.
With the MPS developed Bosch Electronics chassis electronics working well, with only minor tweaks and changes required as the Works team prepared for the car’s first ever public Endurance Race.
The world class driver line up of Ben Barnicoat, Alvaro Parente & Shane Van Gisbergen continued their dominating performance as the race took place.
Aided by the McLaren Race Engineers and Pit stop crew, the team built up a commanding lead in the race, almost having an entire lap gap to their nearest GT3 competition as they took the flag on the race’s unique “half time” stoppage after 6 hours of racing.
The strong, trouble free performance continued well into the second half of the race and by the 10 Hours mark the team had built an entire lap gap ahead of their nearest competition.
Unfortunately, disaster struck shortly after and the team had to box the car for suspension repairs – the 13 minutes In Pit time taking them out of contention for what surely would have been a deserving debut race win.
Still the team fought back relentlessly in the deciding hours of the race to finish a respectable 5th in class on their racing debut, a result and achievement that MPS and the McLaren Automotive Racing Department can be proud of for the first competitive outing of the new racer, still within its development phase.
