The British squad has revealed that it will field a pair of McLaren 720S GT3s in the two-weekend Asian Le Mans Series in February and will continue with the new cars for further GT3 campaigns through the year that will be announced at a later date.
Garage 59 team principal Andrew Kirkaldy said: “Garage 59 has a rich history with McLaren and it’s great to be back with them for 2022.
“The 720S looked very promising throughout last year, so we are really looking forward to getting out there with ours and going racing.”
Garage 59, which took its name from the race number of the 1995 Le Mans 24 Hours-winning McLaren F1 GTR, won the 2016 Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup with a McLaren 650S GT3 shared by Shane van Gisbergen, Rob Bell and Come Ledogar.
The car, like its MP4-12C GT3 predecessor dating back to 2011, was developed by Garage 59 sister company CRS GT under licence from McLaren’s sportscar-manufacturing division.
McLaren Automotive subsequently split with CRS after opting to develop the GT3 version of the 720S in-house for 2019.
That resulted in a switch for that season to the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 by Garage 59, which went on to win the Pro-Am class of the 2020 BGTS Endurance Cup with team co-owners Chris Goodwin and Alexander West.
Chris Goodwin, Andrew Kirkaldy, Garage 59 Racing
Photo by: Garage 59 Racing
The team has yet to announce drivers for its Asian campaign over the two double-header weekends in Dubai and Abu Dhabi on 11/12 and 19/20 February respectively, which have attracted a 25-car entry in the GT class.
Its driver roster across a pair of Aston Martins for the 2021 ALMS included Marvin Kirchhofer, who was announced as a McLaren factory driver earlier this month.
Garage 59’s line-ups for Asia and its full 2022 programme will be announced in the New Year.
The team entered two cars in the GTWCE enduros in 2021, one in the Silver Cup and one in the Pro-Am class, as well as taking third place overall at the Spa 24 Hours blue riband on a one-off with a semi-works entry shared by factory drivers Nicki Thiim, Marco Sorensen and Ross Gunn.