Coming into the 54th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, one of the world’s premier sports car races, Ford Motor Co. was attempting to recapture past glories. But it was attempting to do so in a brand new supercar, a race version of the forthcoming Ford GT.
Before the race we spoke with the director of Ford Performance about the car and the Canadian connection:
As far as tall orders were concerned, this was a skyscraper. “We’re really trying to bring a victory home,” said Dave Pericak, director of Ford Performance, prior to the start of the race. “We race to win … but there’s a lot to do with this vehicle.” Truer words, and all that.
There was a time, probably not so long ago, when endurance racing was a more measured affair – work on your reliability first, wait for competitors to crash or suffer a mechanical failure, generate speed only when necessary. Those days are long gone: Round-the-clock endurance races such as this one are effectively 24-hour sprints now. The leading teams bring to the table bulletproof reliability, record-breaking speed and inscrutable consistency – from their cars and drivers alike.
The race started well for one of the Ford GTs: The No. 66 car, piloted by former Daytona winner Joey Hand, shot into the lead of the GTLM class. The sister car, No. 67, went the other direction: Less than 20 minutes into the race, the Ford GT driven by Ryan Briscoe, became stuck in sixth gear and was forced into the pits for repairs.
Ultimately, the Ford crew worked tirelessly to ensure both cars made it to the finish and they were successful in this regard. The No. 66 car finished seventh in class and 31st over all; the sister car finished ninth in class and 40th over all.
In terms of raw speed over a single lap, both Ford GTs were on the pace of the GTLM class leaders. The class was won by crosstown rivals Chevrolet with its revised Corvette C7-R, which finished one-two, the yellow cars separated by just 0.034 seconds at the stripe.
As the Ford team packed up its cars, the talk focused on how to iron out the weaknesses exposed by 24 hours of high-pitched racing.
The next marathon on the schedule is the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. But the bigger prize is the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. In 1966, Ford staged an historic 1-2-3 finish with the original Ford GT40; a half-century later, the plan is to field a four-car effort with the new car in an attempt to outrun Chevrolet, Porsche and Ferrari.
Another tall order.
Meanwhile, the lessons learned on track will be incorporated into the production Ford GT, scheduled to go on sale by the end of the year. Ford Performance has partnered with Multimatic Motorsports, a race team and engineering firm based in Markham, Ont., on both the race and road versions. The production car will be built in limited numbers; just 250 cars per year over a four-year period.
“We’ve had a very unique opportunity to develop the road car and the race car at the same time,” Pericak said. “It’s sort of a blessing and a curse at the same time. You get to bake into the road car what you need for the race car. Really, what we race is truly what we’re going to sell.”
The writer was a guest of Ford. Content was not subject to approval.
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