Leonardo Fornaroli joins McLaren’s Hypercar team for its 2027 WEC debut

Reigning Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli will race for McLaren in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2027. McLaren confirmed the 21-year-old Italian on Monday as the fourth driver for its new Hypercar team, which makes its debut in the top class next season.

Where the 2026 title fight stands: FIA WEC standings 2026

Fornaroli joins Mikkel Jensen, Laurens Vanthoor and Alex Lynn. According to the FIA WEC, the six-strong driver line-up is now two-thirds complete, which leaves two seats to fill before the car races for the first time.

Two titles in two years

Fornaroli, from Piacenza, won the FIA Formula 3 title in 2024 and the Formula 2 title in 2025, the latter in his rookie season. The FIA WEC notes that only four other drivers have won those two titles back to back. He is part of the McLaren Driver Development Programme and has supported the McLaren F1 team as reserve driver this season.

“Joining McLaren Hypercar Team is an incredibly exciting next step in my career,” Fornaroli said in the announcement published by the FIA WEC. “To represent McLaren in the FIA World Endurance Championship and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a huge honour, and I’m ready to give everything as we take on this new challenge together.”

He does not give up his Formula 1 role: McLaren says Fornaroli will continue as reserve driver for its F1 team in 2027 alongside the WEC programme.

The WEC seat follows a missed Formula 1 chance. In August, Fornaroli took part in a two-day Haas test at Portimão that formula1.com described as essentially a shoot-out with Rafael Câmara, Jack Doohan and Ryo Hirakawa. Haas announced Câmara as its 2027 driver on 15 October.

A world champion and a rookie in the same team

The rest of the line-up leans on experience. Vanthoor, the Belgian who won the 2024 FIA Hypercar World Endurance Drivers’ Championship with Porsche, was announced in May. McLaren said at the time that he will run a reduced IMSA endurance programme with Porsche in 2027 alongside his full WEC season. Jensen was the first driver McLaren named for the project, and Lynn’s signing followed last week.

Team principal James Barclay sees the mix as the point. “We have a great driver line-up forming, which blends experienced sportscar drivers and now young talent for our debut season,” he said.

On Fornaroli himself, Barclay added: “His speed, consistency and maturity at such a young age helped him to achieve a huge amount in the junior categories, and those same attributes make him an exciting addition to our McLaren Hypercar Team.”

The MCL-HY has already had Lando Norris at the wheel

McLaren announced its return to the top class of the WEC 18 months ago. The team runs in partnership with United Autosports, which steps up to the Hypercar category with McLaren. The car is called the MCL-HY, a name that follows the “MCL” convention of McLaren’s Formula 1 cars, with HY for Hypercar.

The car has been racking up test miles this year. For its latest outing at Portimão, McLaren even brought in its 2025 Formula 1 world champion, Lando Norris.

The Le Mans link runs deep for McLaren. The F1 GTR won the 24 Hours outright on the brand’s debut in 1995, and the track version of the new car, the MCL-HY GTR, carries the GTR name that started with that car.

The 2027 Hypercar grid is filling up around it. At Barcelona last weekend, Genesis confirmed Dani Juncadella for its second season, on the same weekend Toyota sealed the 2026 manufacturers’ title.

Our read

An F2 champion without an F1 race seat is a familiar story in this sport. What is different here is that Fornaroli stays inside McLaren. A full WEC season gives him a race every few weeks, a start at Le Mans and a team that already knows him, rather than a year on the sidelines waiting for a call. For McLaren, it is a way to keep a driver it has invested in sharp and close by.

The risk sits on the other side. Hypercar racing is a different craft: traffic management, triple stints, sharing a car with two team-mates. Putting a 21-year-old single-seater driver into a brand-new car in its debut season is a bet on how quickly he adapts.

Two seats left before McLaren’s first WEC race

McLaren still has two drivers to name for 2027 and has not said when it will announce them. The current state of the championship is in our WEC Barcelona results.

Sources: FIA WEC, McLaren Racing, Formula 1.

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