Derick Lee of Sector32 Motorsports: From McLaren Master Technician to 1,000-Horsepower 720S Builds

Derick Lee spent years as a McLaren master technician, first at McLaren Tampa Bay and then in Atlanta, where Throttlecast host Grant Brewer was the brand manager. Today he runs Sector32 Motorsports, the independent exotic and performance shop he started with his brother. The shop has taken a McLaren 720S past 1,100 horsepower and is now bringing BMW into the lineup.

Grant says Derick was the rare technician who liked talking to customers. Buyers wanted to meet the person who diagnosed their car, and Grant would pull Derick out of the shop to meet them. Derick got reprimanded more than once for walking customers back into the service department. He did it anyway. “It equated to sales.”

Walking the line at Woking

Derick visited McLaren’s headquarters in Woking three times. He saw the McLaren Technology Centre, the production center, and McLaren Special Operations, and on one trip the new site where McLaren was developing its carbon tubs.

On his first visit he got to walk the Ultimate Series production line on the floor itself, not from the balcony. A friend from his Tampa days was one of the Ultimate Series lead engineers. His wife came with him and walked the floor too.

The training also made him appreciate the cars most technicians never touch. Working on a P1 required passing a test for certification. His first real-world jobs on a P1, a Senna, a Speedtail, and a Koenigsegg are still the moments he rates highest in his career.

Why he left the dealership

Derick grew up around drag racing and muscle cars. His father took him to the strip, and making cars go fast became part of how he thought about them. At a dealership, performance work is mostly off limits, and he had customers asking for it.

Then he lost his father during COVID. He was about to spend almost a month in Sweden for Koenigsegg training, and his father had wanted to come along. Derick followed through on the training, but afterward he felt lost. He and his father had always talked about having something of their own. “My father always said we’ll do this one day, so here we are.”

It took a little over a year from the decision to opening the doors, and his son was born in the middle of it.

How Sector32 Motorsports got started

Derick’s brother, who had also worked at the dealership, left first and ran the shop day to day. Derick booked appointments in his spare time and kept his dealership job. His days ran from 7 or 8 a.m. at McLaren to 5 or 6 p.m., then at the shop until 10 or 11 at night. He wanted to keep his commitments to the dealership until he couldn’t give its clients his best, and only then did he make the move.

The business paid off almost immediately. The biggest early boost came from the Daily Driven Exotics group, whose members get a discounted rate at the shop. That relationship still brings in work, like a CarPlay install on a Napier Green 720S.

The biggest expense he didn’t see coming was tooling. Sector32 Motorsports uses dealer-level scanners, which run $20,000 to $50,000 each, and the shop took on debt to buy them. His reasoning is simple. A McLaren’s hydraulic suspension has to be depressurized before anyone works on it, and a mistake there costs tens of thousands. It also lets the shop confirm a car is within factory specifications before modifying it. Plenty of parts cross over between brands, he says, but some are adjusted differently, and a cheap part that looks right can put a sensor out of spec.

Taking a 720S past 1,100 horsepower

Derick’s friend Justin Norton won the Netflix show Fastest Car in a McLaren 720S. Derick insists the car was not tuned for the show. He worked on setup, adapting a car that isn’t built for drag racing to the strip within what the rules allowed.

After the win, Justin told him, “I’m going to have a target on my back.” So they started tuning. The first step was an initial tune, roughly a stage one and a half, through a friend from Florida who knew the McLaren’s Bosch ECU. Then they moved to M Engineering. Derick has worked closely with the company and its owner, Mitch, ever since. On the stock turbos and stock fuel system, those cars made about 900 horsepower at the wheels.

As they pushed further, the weak points showed up one at a time: fuel system, turbos, cooling. Justin’s car went past 1,000 horsepower. The next step was new pistons and rods in the factory block, plus the 765LT’s dual-pump fuel system and upgraded injectors. That put Justin’s car in the 1,100 to 1,200 horsepower range.

A 765LT owned by a well-known figure in the exotic car community came close to 1,000 on a simpler recipe. It got upgraded injectors, downpipes, turbo inlets, and a race ethanol blend from one of the shop’s sponsors, with the factory dual pumps and titanium rear exhaust section left alone. Derick pulled it back to about 960 horsepower at the wheels rather than make the owner a test case. The parts went on in a day.

For a typical 720S owner, his advice is 800 to 850 horsepower. It can stretch to 900, but 800 to 850 is the solid range.

Sector32 Motorsports also does Lamborghini and Audi twin-turbo builds, somewhere around four to six so far. They run a MoTeC standalone system with an upgraded fuel system and end up well past 1,000 horsepower.

The McLaren reliability question

Buyers still ask Grant whether McLarens are unreliable. Derick answers with a line he has used for years: at the dealership, he hated the 650S and the 675LT. “They don’t ever come in. They only come in for oil changes.” He never replaced an engine or a transmission in a 675LT. Treat them right, keep up the service, and drive them, and they hold up.

An M3 to launch the BMW side

The car Derick brought to the lounge is a BMW M3, the build that launches Sector32 Motorsports into BMW work. He used to have a McLaren 12C project car, but people already knew the shop did exotics. A BMW would show them something new. The shop weighed Audi before choosing BMW. When Derick started hunting for an M3 or M4, his wife pointed out that they have kids. It’s the M3.

It’s lowered, with an EBC brake upgrade, an intake, an ECU unlock, and a tune. The exhaust is still stock because he hasn’t found a note he likes. Most of the effort went into looks: a full carbon front end, grille, lower ducts, front lip, side skirts, and rear splitter. The color is an ACW wrap he first saw at SEMA, and the hosts both assumed it was paint. The interior is Kyalami Orange. His father was a Florida Gators fan. Derick roots for Florida State, but he let the Gators colors ride for his dad.

He also keeps a C6 Corvette as a father-son car. At Caffeine and Octane, his son shows people which of the family cars “vrooms.”

Rapid fire

• Best McLaren ever built: the 675LT.
• Naturally aspirated or twin turbo: twin turbo forever.
• Most underrated McLaren: the Elva.
• Most exciting car in the shop: a McLaren 720 GT3 X, which Sector32 Motorsports will maintain and support.
• Dream three-car garage: a Lamborghini Countach, the car he grew up on; a Toyota Supra MK4; and a 675LT.

His advice to anyone bringing a car in is to get educated first. People see a build online and think that’s all they need. Derick would rather talk them out of a mistake worth thousands before they make it.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Derick Lee is above and on YouTube. You can find Sector32 Motorsports on Instagram and YouTube, along with its sister company, Collab Garage.

Nights like this happen on the lounge floor at The Ride Lounge, a private car club with climate-controlled car storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta. Members meet the builders, tuners, and technicians behind the cars they love, then take their own out for drives and dinners. See what’s coming up on the events calendar.