The move has yet to be officially announced, but Motorsport.com has learned that McLaren Automotive began proceedings to bring the relationship with its GT racing partner of the past seven years to an end last month.

McLaren Automotive was unable to comment and CRS GT boss Andrew Kirkaldy denied the story.

"That's news to me," Kirkaldy told Motorsport.com. "We are currently beavering away building GT4 cars."

CRS GT Limited, which operated the McLaren GT brand, was established in 2010 to develop the MP4-12C sportscar to the GT3 rulebook.

It subsequently produced its successor, the 650S GT3, as well as the 570S GT4 car.

CRS GT is a fully-independent company that has no cross-shareholding with McLaren Automotive, although it operates out of the ex-Formula 1 facility in Woking Business Park.

Its contracts gave it the licence to build McLaren's official GT3 and GT4 cars. It is believed that its most recent contract covered the life of the 650S GT3 car.

McLaren's automotive arm now appears likely to take the GT3 and GT4 programmes in-house.

It brought in former Strakka Racing team principal Dan Walmsley as head of motorsport within its special operations division last winter.