MOTORSPORT: Ford reviewing its future in Australian Supercars

Ford’s global motorsport chief says he’s not happy with the status quo in the Australian Supercars Championship and has confirmed Ford is reviewing its future in the nation’s top motorsport series.

Since Holden exited Australia in 2020, Ford remains the only car-maker to directly support the country’s premier racing category, but the Blue Oval brand has had an atrocious start to the 2023 Supercars season under new Gen3 technical regulations, which appear to disadvantage the Ford Mustang.

The Ford Mustang’s first race win came just last month and it has qualified fastest only five times so far this season as the Chevrolet Camaro continues to dominate the sport, including the most recent event in Sydney on the weekend.

Ford Mustangs collected a couple of podiums at Sydney Motorsport Park, but the top Ford driver (Chaz Mostert) lies fifth in the championship and the latest results indicate technical disparity still exists between the Camaro and Mustang, despite efforts to improve parity since the opening round in Newcastle.

Ford Performance Motorsport chief Mark Rushbrook has already stated at least once this year that Ford’s commitment to race series including Supercars was dependant on the “opportunity to win”, and now he’s been even more pointed on the matter in an interview with Australian journalists.

“Am I frustrated with Supercars? Yes. Do we evaluate our future in Supercars? We evaluate our future in every series on a very regular basis and we look for the ability to win races and championships… we don’t want to race if we can’t [win].”

Rushbrook specifically criticised the lack of real-time data sharing between Mustang and Camaro teams in Supercars, as occurs in other major motor racing codes including NASCAR and Formula 1.

“There are certainly still limits or things that aren’t happening that we see in other [race] series and I’ve been very open about it – the transparency of data that I can sit here in this building or I can sit on my couch at home and I can see what every NASCAR on track is doing on every single lap,” he said.

“I can’t see that in Supercars and without that transparency of data, it is very difficult for us as a manufacturer or for our teams… to truly understand what the differences are in the cars between the Chevy and the Ford on track, to know what changes to make within the parameters or restrictions of Supercars.

“It’s like a guessing game in many, many situations. But if the data was there, it’d be different.

“What I will say about Supercars is I said I was frustrated. I am. But they are starting to make the changes. I wish they would have done it before the season started, but they are making changes now to try and improve the situation.”

“Supercars have certainly recognised... they need to update their processes and they are active.”

Rushbrook stopped short of saying Ford was ready to pull out of Supercars if the parity problem wasn’t solved soon, stating: “Any decision for any series, whether to join or to leave, is a difficult decision because we don’t want to be coming and going in different series.

“We look at every racing series in the world and decide where are we going to race or not race,” he said.

Ford’s international motorsport boss said it was of paramount importance for any race series to have a “technical innovation transfer between road, race and back”.

NASCAR switched to a ‘Next Gen’ (Gen 6) race car formula in 2022, which has a lot of similarities with Australian Supercars and brings more technology to North America’s most popular race series.

NASCAR and Supercars are sharing more than just technology these days, with top Aussie drivers including Brodie Kostecki and reigning Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen – who won a NASCAR Cup Series race on his debut in Chicago recently – set to contest the world’s biggest stock car racing title next month.

Asked if Ford would support a move to bring NASCAR to Australia, or for Supercars to switch to NASCAR rules, Rushbrook said: “I fully encourage NASCAR to talk to Supercars Australia and Supercars Australia to talk to NASCAR.

“I think if there’s efficiencies for us, as a manufacturer, efficiencies always make sense. And if you’re able to share parts, systems, vehicles between different series, that makes sense,” he said.

“In the sports car world, that is what is making so much sense right now. As a manufacturer, you don’t have to make a decision to invest in one [racing series] or the other. Now there’s a convergence of GT3 you can race in IMSA, GT Pro and you can do customer racing around the world with the exact same car."

But Rushbrook said that despite the uniqueness of Australian Supercars, it still makes sense for Ford to contest the series Down Under.

“I think it can make sense. If we didn’t think it could make sense, we wouldn’t have pursued the development of the [Gen3 Mustang Supercar] car to race there.

“The race against Ford versus Chevy in Australia is still a great opportunity, but where it’s proven to maybe not be the opportunity we thought it was… the parity process worked with [Gen2] when it was between Ford and Holden – the same engine architecture and same displacement.

“However, the [Gen3] parity tools did not advance to… allow different engine architectures and different displacement or even the body and aerodynamics.”

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au