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‘We race to perfect the machine.’ How Ford is embedding motorsports in its core business
Posted by Talbot Payne on January 24, 2024
Charlotte, N.C. — The stars were out at the Ford Performance Season Launch in Charlotte this week. Fifty racing luminaries from Red Bull Formula One driver Sergio Perez to NASCAR champ Ryan Blaney to off-road wizard Vaughn Gittin Jr. to Funny Car drag racer Bob Tasca III showed off the breadth of the Blue Oval’s international racing ambitions as it embarks on the 2024 racing season.
On the doorstep of the racing world’s epic season openers at Daytona — the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona on Jan. 27 and NASCAR’s Daytona 500 on Feb. 18 — the event was an opportunity to digest the historic announcements Ford Motor Co. made over the last year as it embeds motorsports into its core, production business model in ways that performance icons like Porsche and Ferrari have done.
Leading the parade is the thundering, V-8-powered Mustang, the world’s best-selling sportscar, and an icon as important to Ford’s future as the screaming, flat-6 cylinder Porsche 911 is to the German automaker.
Ford CEO Jim Farley with the new Mustang GT3 at Multimatic, the race shop building the track beasts for the Dearborn automaker. Griffith Bean, Endurance Photography
Mustang flies the Ford flag in multiple race series: International Motor Sports Association, FIA World Endurance Challenge, NASCAR, Xfinity, NHRA drag racing, Mustang Challenge, Australian Supercar, GT4 and Formula Drift. This year, the Mustang GT3 race car will debut at IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Racing’s Rolex 24, taking on Porsche, Ferrari, Corvette, McLaren, Lamborghini, BMW, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Lexus and Acura in the world’s most watched sportscar series.
Sold as a customer racing car, the GT3 program is a break from Ford’s past as a factory-only team that won Le Mans in 1966 and 2016 (with, respectively, the Ford GT40 and GT).
“Why do we race? To perfect the machine. We want to move our racing beyond a marketing expense and shift from a factory orientation to a customer orientation,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley at a media tour at Mutimatic, the race shop building GT3 race cars for Ford in Charlotte. “We have shrink-wrapped our company around iconic models like the Mustang. From Aussie Supercar to drift racing to WEC to IMSA, Mustang is at every race track in every corner of the world. What other nameplate does that?”
Ford Performance Season Launch – Farley and Henry Ford racing history. Wes Duenkel, Ford
Racing is in Ford’s blood going back to its founding when Henry Ford secured investors by winning a 1901 race in his Sweepstakes racer. That DNA has been passed on to his great grandson, Ford executive chair Bill Ford Jr. — a passionate race fan who attended the Charlotte celebration — as well as Farley, an accomplished sportscar racer who has competed in his 1968 GT40 at the vintage Le Mans classic in France.
At a time when government regulations are forcing automakers to make electric vehicles, Ford sees racing as a way to separate itself from the homogenization of the industry around self-driving, battery-powered models.
Ford Performance Season Launch – F1 driver Sergio Perez and Farley. Wes Duenkel, Ford
“We don’t make commoditized vehicles!” said Farley before extolling the virtues of the Mustang’s V-8. “If we are the only ones on the planet making a V-8, then so be it. We will continue to invest.”
The comment brought a roar from the hundreds of Ford enthusiasts and employees at the Season Launch event.
NASCAR star Blaney followed Farley on stage to underscore the point. Motorsports put a premium on high-horsepower gas engines that can withstand long, open-throttle runs, complete efficient pit stops, and entertain fans. Blaney drove a 5.7-liter, 670-horsepower Team Penske Mustang V-8 to his first title in 2023.
Ford Racing Season Launch 2024 – the Mustang GT3 uses a 5.4-liter V-8 engine derived from the production Mustang GT. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
“There aren’t a lot of people making V-8s anymore, but at Ford that’s what we’re all about,” he said to more huzzahs.
The event’s other big cheer came for F1 Red Bull star Perez. Ford and Red Bull, the premier team in the world’s premier motorsport, have partnered for the 2026 F1 season when the sport goes to a 50-50 gas-electric hybrid powertrain. Ford will supply the battery technology for the powerplant in the early stages of development at Red Bull’s headquarters in England.
Unlike the global Mustang GT3 and GT4 customer cars that will ring Ford’s cash register, the F1 partnership has a traditional, marketing-and-technology-transfer focus.
“Formula One has blown up across the U.S.,” said Farley, standing next to the Mexican driver, in reference to the unprecedented three U.S. Grand Prix events now on the F1 calendar. “We can offer battery technology to them, and we get aerodynamic and digital telemetry learning from them.”
At Multimatic’s state-of-the-art race shop in Charlotte’s Mooresville suburb, Farley elaborated on the Red Bull-Ford team’s impact on Ford’s nascent EV product lines.
“Going Formula One racing with Red Bull is a very specific bet. It’s a technology transfer,” said the 61-year old CEO. “We get aerodynamic technology from the partnership, and we need the best aero people in the world to shrink the battery size of EVs. This is old-school tech transfer.”
Ford CEO Jim Farley lays out his vision for Ford’s racing future at Multimatic in Mooresville, N.C., discussing the automaker’s partnership in F1 with Red Bull: “We can offer battery technology to them, and we get aerodynamic and digital telemetry learning from them. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Farley’s motorsports vision is also self-aware — a way to “executive-proof” racing from the personal whims of changing leadership. “We don’t want racing to be a particular avocation of our executives,” said Farley, who plans to race a GT4 Mustang in the SRO series this year. “We want motorsports to be self-sustaining, not episodic. Porsche has done that. That means on- and off-road racing, driver’s schools, merchandise. We want to do this for a long time.”
Off-road racing is the fourth leg of the performance table along with open-wheel, sportscar, and drag racing and has big potential given the production market’s shift to SUV and truck products.
“We want to dominate off-road,” Farley said.
Ford won the Baja 1000 stock classes last year with Bronco and F-150 Raptors as well as the King of the Hammers 4600 class in a Bronco. In 2024, it expands that effort to the Dakar Rally, a brutal, two-week event through Saudi Arabian desert.
Ford Racing Season Launch 2024 – Vaughn Gittin, Jr. gives off-road rides in the Ford Lightning Switchgear EV. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Hammers 4600 class champ Gittin (who also won the Formula Drift championship in a busy year) took the Season Launch stage to celebrate another Ford off-road endeavor: its first, trail-focused F-150 Lightning Switchgear EV pickup.
“This is the most capable EV on the planet,” Gittin said of the 580-horspower, four-wheel-drive beast developed by his race shop, RTR Vehicles, for Ford. “We are super pumped about the ultimate fun-haver machine.”
Gittin and teammate Loren Healy were also super pumped about the upcoming Hammers season opener in Johnson Valley, California, from Jan. 28-Feb. 3. With an eye on off-road customer racing, Ford has made 50 Bronco DR racers for the Baja/Hammers series.
Ford Performance Season Launch – Farley (second from right) with Mustang GT3 drivers and Multimatic’s Holt (far right). Griffith Bean, Endurance Photography
But all eyes that weekend will be on the East Coast when Ford’s long-awaited Mustang GT3 goes for Daytona endurance glory in the competitive GTD class.
The Ford flag will wave over three entries — two factory cars from Ford Multimatic Motorsports and one from privateer Proton Competition.
Multimatic Chief Technical Officer Larry Holt is the mad genius behind the firm’s ascension to the pinnacle of motorsports development, where it crafts race cars for Porsche as well as Ford. He gave media a tour of the Mustang GT3 production process, from the raw, steel chassis made at Ford’s Flat Rock plant to the winged cyborg that will compete at the Daytona 24-hour.
At a cost of $700,000-$800,000 per car, GT3 production can spit out 40 cars a year for global customers, said Holt. The carbon-fiber skinned monster develops an impressive 2,600 pounds of downforce (about 50% of an IndyCar) and has gone through rigorous endurance testing ahead of its Rolex 24 debut.
At its core, of course is a bored-out, 5.4-liter, normally-aspirated V-8 — a close cousin of the production 5.0-liter V-8 Mustang GT.
“We’re really excited about the race,” said Ford Performacne chief Mark Rushbrook. “We think we’ve done all our homework but the ultimate test is when we get on track. We’re looking forward to competing against the best in the world.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.