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Team Goh eyes return to Le Mans 24 Hours in top class

Le Mans 24 Hours winner Team Goh is targeting a return to the event in the prototype ranks after reviving its teamfor 2019.

Team owner Kazumichi Goh, who won Le Mans with Audi in 2004, has revealed that he has aspirations to race again at the blue-riband round of the World Endurance Championship following the announcement of his plans for a domestic campaign with the McLaren 720S GT3 in 2019.

He has stressed that he is back in motorsport for the long haul and has admitted that he is already evaluating how to return to Le Mans for the first time since 2009.

"I do have the aim to return to Le Mans somewhere down the line and we're looking at all options," Goh told Autosport.

"We'd like to challenge for the overall win again, but we're not ruling out LMP2."

Goh revealed that his organisation is monitoring the new hypercar concept prototype rules due come into force in the WEC for the 2020/21 season.

"I've put a couple of guys on watching the regulations and we believe that the estimated budget is sustainable for a privateer," he explained.

He has not ruled out continuing his relationship with McLaren, which he has revived for this year with twin-assaults on the GT300 class of the Super GT Series and Super Taikyu.

He described working with McLaren as a "potential route" should the firm give the green light to its tentative plans to build a hypercar prototype.

Team Goh will field one-car entries in both Super GT and Super Taikyu in 2019 under the McLaren Customer Racing Japan banner.

It will also enter both its cars in the Suzuka 10 Hours round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge in July ahead of a full campaign with McLaren in the six-round series in 2020.

Goh's first involvement as an entrant yielded the Japanese GT Championship title in 1996 with the McLaren F1 GTR.

He went to Le Mans for the first time in 1997 with a long-tail version of the McLaren run by the British Parabolica team.

Goh subsequently entered BMW, Panoz and Dome prototypes, as well as a Chrysler Viper GT2 car, before embarking on a three-year relationship with Audi in 2002.

For Le Mans 2004 Goh was loaned factory Audi drivers Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo, who won the race together with long-time Goh driver Seiji Ara at the wheel of an R8 LMP1 car.

The team's most recent appearance at Le Mans came in 2009 with an LMP2 class Porsche RS Spyder.

Zdroj: autosport.com