Ford Performance launched its Mustang GT3 programme formally at the Le Mans 24 Hours earlier this month, amid a peppering of reveals and announcements from teams, manufacturers and governing bodies ahead of the centenary event.
The reveal of new Ford Performance branding and a colourful new Troy Lee paint scheme made for some striking images, but the real news to come out of the launch was the detail given on where, when and with whom the Mustang will race in 2024 and beyond.
Clearly, the bombshell was the news that Proton Competition has been signed up to race with the Mustang in the FIA WEC’s LMGT3 category in 2024. This is simply a coup for the ‘Blue Oval’, which like many GT3 manufacturers will have to wait until the end of the year to find out if it has been granted spots on the FIA WEC grid for Year 1 of the category.
Signing Proton, Porsche’s largest GTE customer, puts Ford in a position in which it can afford to feel reasonably comfortable about gaining a pair of slots on the grid. This was a calculated move, not a last-minute decision ahead of Le Mans week. DSC understands that this deal came together a long time ago and was successfully kept under wraps in the build-up to the public announcement.
Requests for entries will be accepted between October and December for the FIA WEC in 2024, and Frederic Lequien, the championship CEO, said in the wake of the ACO press conference that he wants the WEC to be “open”.
“One of the strengths (of having GT3 cars) is diversity,” Lequien said. “If there are enough places we would welcome all the GT3 manufacturers. At the moment all of them want to come.”
However, when asked for clarity about the possibility of Hypercar manufacturers being refused LMGT3 entries to make way for OEMs new to the championship, he dismissed the idea.
“It’s through the selection committee,” he said, “but if you are a hypercar manufacturer I do not see how it’s possible to refuse the entry of a GT3.”
Therefore, Ford and other aspirant manufacturers without a hypercar programme will all be vying for a limited number of grid slots. The likelihood is that there will not be enough space to accommodate everyone that files for entries, meaning some teams and manufacturers may find themselves disappointed when the final list is made public.
Without a Hypercar programme, Mark Rushbrook, Ford Performance’s global director, admitted to DSC that there are no guarantees of entries, despite the significance of Proton’s involvement.
He also said that Proton’s Hypercar programme with Porsche played no part in Ford’s desire to sign up Christian Ried’s team. Put simply, this wasn’t a tactical move from Ford, whereby having Proton on its books meant it had enough of a link to a Hypercar effort to secure entries.
“For us that was not part of the process or considerations,” he said.
Instead, Proton simply felt like a natural fit. It is a team that Ford has long admired, which has the added benefit of a close relationship to Multimatic through its Porsche 963 and IMSA LMP2 and GTD efforts.
“Since we announced this programme in Daytona of 2022 we’ve had endless interest from different series and different teams,” Rushbrook said.
They do it right, and that’s what we looking for
“Over several conversations, we got to know Chris (Ried) as a person and then it got serious. For us it’s not just about racing the cars, it’s about people. As a team, they’ve accomplished a lot with A-Grade engineers. They do it right, and that’s what we looking for.
“We live in a big world, but our racing community is quite small. You get to know people very quickly whether you’re working with them directly or not. There has been curiosity in the past about what we might be doing.
“You then have those discussions to see whether there is any real interest and suddenly there is.”
Alongside Proton’s FIA WEC plans with the new car, Ford has revealed that Multimatic will run a GTD Pro effort in IMSA, ensuring that the Mustang GT3 has a significant presence in both IMSA and the ACO’s major championships.
Ford bringing factory resources to GTD Pro will raise the bar and strengthen what promises to be a hotly contested class next year, featuring a variety of manufacturers, including Corvette and its new Z06 GT3.R.
Ford believes this is the best way forward after careful consideration. Ford had to decide whether to operate as a factory in GTD or bless a world-class professional team to race on its behalf. In the end the former was the chosen path.
Multimatic has been a great partner, not just in developing cars but also with racing the cars
“Multimatic has been a great partner, not just in developing cars but also with racing the cars,” Rushbrook told DSC. “They’ve done a lot with us over the years with a variety of Mustangs and also with the GT, manufacturing and running those cars from 2016 to 2019.
“They have a bunch of great people we’ve enjoyed working with over the years, so it didn’t take any time to decide that ‘yes’, when we do this car we want to run this as a factory in IMSA and ‘yes’, Multimatic is absolutely the right team to be working with.”
The bigger question is what comes beyond 2024 and the two announced programmes? There is a real buzz around the Mustang returning to big races like Le Mans and the Rolex 24. In fact, Rushbrook believes the level of excitement and expectation around the programme goes beyond that of the GT’s stint as a GTE car.
“As important as the GT40 and GT is to our history,” he said, “the constant has always been the Mustang, for almost 60 years now. It has been an icon for us on the road and it has been an icon for us on the race track. But never to this level that we’re able to do now with this seventh-generation Mustang.”
Evidence of this is that Edsel Ford II, the chairman of the board of the Henry Ford Estate, is understood to have been present at every Mustang GT3 test. The Ford family, DSC is told by a source, didn’t keep the same watchful eye over the development of the GTE car.
As it stands, the Mustang GT3 may be restricted to just the two previously announced programmes in 2024. Instead, the 2025 season is when we should expect to see an expanded fleet of customer cars hit the track globally.
This is because the homologation of the car will not come until later this year, limiting the number of cars that can be built in time for next season. Testing, DSC understands, has been encouraging, but hasn’t been without its hiccups.
The most significant bump in the road was an engine failure at a test in March, which saw the car suffer a camshaft issue, costing Ford a handful of test days while the problem was diagnosed and rectified.
So far, Rushbrook told DSC, the car has only tested at Sebring (though on multiple occasions), and was touring the Floridian airfield circuit as recently as last week when it underwent a mixture of endurance and performance runs. The feedback has been promising, the car is understood to be particularly strong under braking and in acceleration out of corners.
“As great as our analytical tools are, ultimately you need to get the car on track and when we had our first test at Sebring we got a lot of issues we didn’t expect,” Rushbrook said when asked about the issues the car faced during early testing.
We’re on track and continuing the development process to schedule
“But again, back to great people, some of those (issues) we were able to deal with at the circuit, others we had to take away and rethink. But we’re on track and continuing the development process to schedule.”
No figure has been made public concerning mileage, however DSC believes that the track time lost to the engine issue has since been made up, with its most recent runs netting positive results.
Another crucial step still to come though concerns tyres, specifically when the car will first test on Goodyears as part of the US brand’s WEC tyre development programme. Thus far the Mustang hasn’t made an appearance at a Goodyear test in Europe.
There was the prospect of a Mustang to test in Europe with Goodyear before Le Mans, but it was not possible due to the timeline of the car’s development. The next opportunity will come later in the summer; it remains to be seen whether or not Ford will take it.
DSC approached Larry Holt at Multimatic for further clarification and details on the test programme, and was given a polite ‘no comment’.
Ultimately, any time spent testing with other tyre brands will be useful. There is a desire from within Ford to get the Mustang GT3 racing in as many places as possible, meaning SRO events and appearances as races such as the Nürburgring 24 Hours are on the cards for the future.
“But it will take some time for us to get ourselves into gear,” admitted Rushbrook. “There are definitely some places where we expect to have a presence outside of a normal schedule.
“Knowing we will be competing in those series – some with Michelin, some with Pirelli, some with Goodyear, some with all three, we plan to do testing and development on all three.
“We want to do it all the right way.”
Mustang GT3 images courtesy of Ford
