“It’s not called endurance racing because it’s short and easy.”
Ford is bringing the Mustang to GT3 endurance racing for the first time in history. It might seem odd to think that the Mustang—one of the most iconic sports cars in history—has never gone endurance racing but thankfully that’s about to change. To document the new Ford Mustang GT3 and its journey into its first-ever season, Ford is releasing a five-part documentary on YouTube as it heads toward its debut race at Daytona and the first part just dropped.
One of the best parts of motorsport is how hard it is. Even the biggest and best of teams with the most funding struggle to get cars working, ready, and fixed throughout a racing season. Getting a car ready for its first season, in a sport you’ve never done before, is a much different beast. As the video says, though: “It’s not called endurance racing because it’s short and easy.”
This Mustang GT3 is a factory-backed car, running under the Ford Performance banner but Ford is also working with Multimatic Motorsports from North Carolina and M-Sport from England. The latter, known for its success in rally racing, is working with Ford to build a Coyote-based 5.4-liter naturally aspirated V8 GT3 engine and its race-bred American V8 thunder sounds incredible.
Ford Performance
Nothing ever goes to plan, though. That’s why the documentary exists, to show the ups and downs of getting a race car ready for its first-ever go in GT3 racing. Parts break, data gets jumbled, and drivers ask for tweaks to the car, to get it just right. It’s a constant battle, which is why the car has been in development for almost two years but it only just recently hit the track at Sebring for testing.
But it isn’t just the Mustang’s upcoming GT3 debut at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona that Ford is worried about. The Mustang GT3 will be sold to customer racing teams across the globe, so it needs to be a functional, dependable race car that Ford’s teams can rely on. It also needs to be quick.
This video is only the first part of the five-part series but the next four parts will roll out over the next few weeks, leading up to Daytona.
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