IT’S OFFICIAL: FORD MUSTANG FOR SUPERCARS

Ford Mustang to race in Supercars from 2019 – Photo: Supplied

It’s official! At 11am today at Albert Park in Melbourne the president of Ford Australia, Graeme Whickman, confirmed that Ford is back in Supercars racing and its Mustang V8 will hit the track at the start of 2019.

By PAUL GOVER

The two-door coupe, which has a winning history in the Australia Touring Car Championship back to the 1960s, could also make a preview appearance at the Bathurst 1000 in October but that is yet to be confirmed.

The Ford comeback, as revealed exclusively by Auto Action, reverses the blue oval’s withdrawal from Supercars racing in 2014. It also comes on the very day that the Mustang celebrates its 54th birthday.

“I’m happy. Absolutely. This is great news,” says Whickman.

The Supercars program is part of a massive new commitment to the Ford Performance brand that stretches from the Fiesta ST through the Mustang to the Ranger Raptor in Australia.

Also on the Supercars front, the Raptor will also become the official ‘recovery vehicle’ for the series from the start of next year.

“Our mission is clear. It’s performance through innovation,” says Whickman

“It’s a commitment to the motoring enthusiasts.”

Work has already begun on adapting the Mustang to the Gen2 platform in Supercars, with Luco Lacroix from DJR Team Penske and Nathaniel Osborne from Tickford taking the lead on the engineering work.

“It’s fairly early days. But we have a very good understanding of how the Mustang will fit over the control chassis,”says Ryan Story of DJR Team Penske.

He rejects any claims that the category is not open to two-door coupes, provided they are four-seater passenger cars, something confirmed by Supercars boss Sean Seamer.

The return of the Mustang, last raced at the top level by Dick Johnson, began in 2017.

That’s when Whickman says the confirmation of the 2018 ‘stang triggered talk inside Ford Australia.

It also came after the pain and misery of the Falcon factory shutdown, and well after the withdrawal from motorsport in 2014 that was part of major cutbacks on non-essential items as the Broadmeadows workforce faced up to redundancy.

“We needed to concentrate on our business of transformation,” says Whickman.

“We felt that with the ’18 model coming it was an appropriate time. That was when the strategic decision was made.

“We had a number of months going backwards and forwards with Ford Performance in Detroit, then we began talking to the teams.”

He says DJR Team Penske and Tickford are part of a “partnership”, not a works program, as part of the multi-million dollar launch of Ford Performance.

Whickman is not forcing other Ford teams to switch to the Mustang, but says DJRTP and Tickford will be able to supply the necessary components for teams that want to update for 2019.

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