Ahead of tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Fuji (28 September) – round seven of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign – United Autosports CEO Richard Dean has reflected upon the McLaren-fielding outfit’s maiden LMGT3 win at Lone Star Le Mans.
For a brief moment in the drenched Circuit of The Americas (COTA) paddock, United Autosports CEO Richard Dean thought the team he co-founded with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown had equalled its best-ever result in FIA WEC’s LMGT3 category. Marino Sato had just crossed the finish line at Lone Star Le Mans, round six of the 2025 season, in second place behind the wheel of the #95 McLaren 720S he shares with Darren Leung and Sean Gelael.
The sister #59 car, which scooped the runner-up spoils in the Qatar 1812km curtain-raiser, took the chequered flag fourth. “We’d still have been very pleased with second and fourth,” Dean admits to fiawec.com. “This is a world championship, the pinnacle of endurance racing, so these are not easy things to achieve.”
However, drama subsequently struck in Texas as the #54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari was demoted from first to third place after being handed a five-second penalty for contact between Davide Rigon and Ben Barker’s #77 Proton Competition Ford. “One of our engineers had pointed out to me that they were under review for an incident,” says Dean. “The conditions were so difficult. Inevitably, there was going to be contact between a lot of cars.”
As he made his way towards the podium, the former racing driver realised something was definitely afoot because the #54 Ferrari was stopped in the pit-lane, wheeled back from its spot alongside the #6 Porsche 963 Hypercar in the winners’ circle. “Before I even got down to the podium, I could see Marino, who was already celebrating, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, he’s celebrating a lot, more than you would a second place’, and then the whole team was still celebrating, so I realised that was the moment.”
United Autosports’ maiden LMGT3 win owed much to the team’s strategy of trading in its cars’ wet tyres for slicks, despite the damp conditions, for the final 30 minutes of the race. “Those calls from the race engineers are always difficult,” Dean acknowledges. ”You only really know when the chequered flag falls what the right decision was.”
The Briton explains that, over the final ten minutes of that last half-hour, both cars largely out-performed their wet tyre-shod rivals, as Sato went on to gain close to five seconds per lap. “But to achieve the last ten minutes, you have to get through the first ten minutes. The engineers put their trust in Grégoire Saucy and Marino Sato, in their ability to manage that very, very difficult first period where you’re trying to get temperature into a cold slick tyre on a wet track. They achieved that brilliantly.”
“It was an incredible end to an incredible race”, reflects Ian James, McLaren Automotive Director of Motorsport. “Massive congratulations to Marino for a brilliant final stint; he kept in touch with the leaders and made the most of the slick tyres on a drying track to take the win.”
Dean, who won the 2006 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the GT2 class with Team LNT’s #81 Panoz Esperante LM GT, adds that both Saucy and Sato agreed with the switch to slick tyres. “There’s a lot of consultation going on, but sometimes you just have to trust your drivers.”
The fact that United Autosports secured such a brilliant collective result speaks volumes about the McLaren 720S’ handling and driveability in challenging conditions, even for Bronze-rated drivers. “It’s a very well-balanced car,” says Dean. “The drivers love to drive it. It’s not a car that they feel has a particular trait for driving. That makes them comfortable – and when they’re comfortable, they’re confident. When you’re confident in those conditions, it all helps.”
The Englishman acknowledges that winning Lone Star Le Mans represented a big achievement for United Autosports, but the team’s Co-Founder considers that a maiden LMGT3 victory is just a stepping-stone towards further success in the FIA World Endurance Championship for the Woking-based marque. “We put a lot of effort, trust and faith in our partnership with McLaren. I’m very proud of the team and the effort from McLaren. But the point where we believe that we can go on and win again would be the defining moment.”
Could United Autosports become the first LMGT3 team to win back-to-back races this season in the shadow of Japan’s highest peak? “We were quite competitive last year at Fuji,” remembers Dean. “I think it’s a track that suits the McLaren. We’ve made a lot of small changes in a lot of areas that hopefully all add up to us being able to challenge right to the end of the race, and FIA WEC’s 100th event would be a good one to win...”
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