MOTORSPORT: Ford Mustang GT3 racer revealed

Ford has used the 2023 Le Mans 24 Hour as the backdrop to reveal the new 2024 Ford Mustang GT3 racer, which has been locked in for next year’s running of the classic French endurance race and the World Endurance Championship.

Based on the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, the Blue Oval’s GT3 sports car program was launched in September last year at the unveiling of the new S650-series coupe, with a multi-faceted program for the model that also includes NASCAR, GT4, NHRA drag racing and grassroots competition.

The first of the new-generation cars worldwide to debut was the latest Supercars iteration, which took to the track at the 2023 Repco Bathurst 1000 with Dick Johnson at the controls.

For Ford, returning to Le Mans sees the US brand attempt to emulate its most recent class success in the event, which came in 2016 with the GT model – a tribute to the famed GT40 that claimed outright race honours four times in the 1960s.

“Ford and Le Mans are bound together by history, and now we’re coming back to the most dramatic, most rewarding and most important race in the world,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley.

“It is not Ford versus Ferrari anymore, it is Ford versus everyone.

“Going back to Le Mans is the beginning of building a global motorsports business with Mustang, just like we are doing with Bronco and Raptor off-road.”

For the project, Ford Performance has partnered with two ongoing allies in Multimatic and M-Sport.

Multimatic previously developed the Ford GT for racing and will be behind the chassis side of the GT3, while rally experts M-Sport will fettle the 5.4 litre Coyote-based V8 engine, the same architecture used in Supercars Gen3 competition.

Ford has also announced that Proton Competition will be the first customer team to campaign the Mustang in the World Endurance Championship, while Multimatic will be the driving force behind a two-car factory-backed North American campaign, which will kick off at the 2024 Daytona 24 Hours.

Ford has alluded that the car will run in different competitions worldwide, although to date has not confirmed entries in the Bathurst 12 Hour or the GT3-based GT World Challenge Australia series.

Ford has previously teased the Mustang GT3 being put through its paces at Sebring Raceway in the US, with the package now having to be homologated to comply with the category’s strict parity formula.

The 2023 Le Mans 24 Hour, meanwhile, will start with an all-Ferrari front row, with the Prancing Horse earning its first pole position for the crown jewel event since 1973.

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