- Ford has already grown its motorsport repertoire and could target the top form of endurance racing next.
- The company’s motorsport boss says the convergence of LMH and LMDh rules makes the sport even more compelling.
- If it makes a hypercar, Ford could rival Ferrari for outright victory for the first time since the 1960s.
Not satisfied with its recent return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Ford Mustang GT3, the Blue Oval is mulling the idea of entering the top class of endurance racing with a hybrid hypercar, according to a new report.
Ford, under the leadership of Jim Farley, has renewed its interest in motorsport over recent years and competes in series including the World Endurance Championship’s (WEC) GT3 class, WRC, NASCAR, the Dakar Rally, and Australia’s Supercars series, among others. It’s also built several wild motorsport one-offs, including the insane F-150 Lightning Supertruck.
Read: Aston Martin’s Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar Uncovered During Testing
A class in which it isn’t competing in, and one that’s surging in popularity, is the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) series, or the Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh) series, which would allow it to compete with the likes of Ferrari, Cadillac, Porsche, BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini, Toyota and Peugeot.
When recently asked by Autocar if Ford has any interest in the world of hybrid hypercars, the director of Ford Performance’s motorsport division, Mark Rushbrook, acknowledged the strength of sports car racing, and the recent convergence of rule sets makes the idea more compelling.
“Motorsports is very strong, overall, globally, and all different disciplines – they’re all strong. But I think, relatively, sports car racing in these last three years has really come on, and a lot of that is because of global convergence.,” he said. “GTE and GT LM converged with GT3 – so now we’ve got one focus for GT racing, which helped us make sense out of having the Mustang GT3 – and the same at prototype [level], which has not truly converged in many ways, because there’s still the LMdH formula, or the LMH formula, but at least there’s the ability to race them together, so that convergence has been great.”
Rushbrook added that Ford is looking into LMH and LMDh but did not say if the marque has a preference.
Interestingly, Rushbrook revealed that Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner approached Ford about partnering on the RB17 hypercar, but Ford decided its “ambitions” in the space were already being met by the GT MkIV. As such, if Ford does enter hypercar racing, it won’t be with Red Bull, but would likely do so with another specialist motorsport outfit.
