7aMoDi Posted February 1, 2024 Posted February 1, 2024 We spoke with Ford Performance's Mark Rushbrook and Multimatic's Larry Holt about the joint development between the Mustang GT3 race car and upcoming GTD road car. When Ford CEO Jim Farley decided to build a road version of the Mustang GT3 race car, he didn't chat about it to the public. Instead, he formed a skunkworks team in closed-door meetings so secretive that they included non-disclosure agreements for everyone involved. As the idea for the Mustang GTD started to take shape, the secret meetings progressed to an unmarked aluminum shed while Mustang Dark Horse chassis were being quietly brought to Multimatic, the manufacturing goliath in charge of both GT3 and GTD efforts. The first time the public caught wind of the GTD wouldn't come until much later. On March 21, 2023, Jim Farley posted a video to X (formerly known as Twitter), showing factory driver Joey Hand testing the Mustang GT3 race car around Sebring. That same day he would respond to his own tweet with a rhetorical "Should we make a road version?" Of course, by the time Farley made those posts, the GTD was already well into development; we just hadn't seen it yet. Any Track, Any Weekend In an effort to learn a bit more about the GTD, we accepted Ford's recent invitation to tour the Multimatic facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Mustang GT3 race cars are built—and then on to the Rolex 24 at Daytona to see them in action. We looked forward to the chance to get some insight into why Ford has put the time, money, and effort into both projects. We posed that question to Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports, and his answer was simple: With Mustang sales growing in Europe and the 60th anniversary of the nameplate coming up, Ford wants to build a connection with fans around the world. That connection comes from having Mustangs racing at any track around the world on any weekend. It also includes getting Ford involved in GT3 racing for the first time since the departure of the GT following the 2019 season. As for the GTD—according to Larry Holt (the mad scientist in charge of engineering and motorsport operations for Multimatic)—well, that's all Jim Farley's idea. Production-Car Roots Like any other GT3 race car, the Mustang GT3 starts its life on the production line. The race car is derived directly from the Dark Horse road car; Holt and his team at Multimatic take what they learn from the GT3 car and reverse-engineer it to fit the roadgoing GTD. "From road to race, and race to road," explained Rushbrook. The relationship between the two cars is apparent the moment you lay eyes on them. From the widened front fenders to the twin air vents in the hood to the gooseneck wing mounts at the back of the cars, the similarities are prolific. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46597866/ford-mustang-gt3-test-bed-for-gtd/
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