United Autosports has confirmed that it will enter next year’s GT4 European Series. The British-based team, winner of the LMP2 class in last weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, will return to GT racing for the first time since 2015.

United Autosports is a sports car racing team, founded by American businessman and entrepreneur Zak Brown and former British racing driver Richard Dean

Richard Dean, Team Owner and Managing Director, United Autosports: It made business sense for the team to get involved in another form of sportscar racing and to race under the umbrella of a second promoter.

He described the GT4 assault in 2021 as a necessary step in order to build a new team separate to its prototype operations.

“We want to go in there and try to win and we thought it would be a big step to go straight into GT3 and compete at the very front,” he explained.

“We thought GT4 was a good way to set up the team because we need new people: we can’t just take staff out of our other programmes and dilute them.”

It makes sense for the team to run the McLaren 570S GT4, according to Brown, who went on to stress that he keeps his role with the British marque separate to his interests in United.

“The 570S was the obvious choice, though I would have also been comfortable running Mercedes because of the Formula 1 relationship [with McLaren],” he said.

United was set up in 2009 to compete in GT racing the following year, initially with the Audi R8 LMS and then the McLaren MP4-12C. Matt Bell and Mark Patterson missed out on the 2013 British GT Championship title by 1.5 points at the wheel of a McLaren.