Ford's Big Return Season with Mustangs | Behind The Scenes | Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta

IMSA fans, we've had an amazing year. Ford Performance has been here in a gigantic way. Debut of these glorious Mustang GT3s going super well in the WeatherTech Sports Car Championship. GT4 as well helping to feed the next generation here. Mustang Challenge Series also kicked off in summer. We just wanted to give this pony love, absolute blue oval love here. Season finale Alex, tell us about how the year's gone from your perspective knowing the three tiers Ford is so heavily invested in. Yeah so it's been an awesome year kicking off all three of the new projects for us. So obviously a lot of a lot of work leading up to this, a lot of time from all of our engineering groups. Really starting with the Mustang Challenge. Dark Horse has been the base of our pyramid building for this year of sports car racing. Been really exciting to get that car launched, get customers in it. Really starting at an entry level for sports car racing and obviously launching our Mustang Cup next year as well. Building on that pyramid, a great place to start. So awesome to see that car launching. Everyone's super excited to watch this. As a fan, seeing all these Mustangs on track has been amazing. We have a full stampede of Mustangs every weekend we like to joke about. So seeing that, building a foundation has been amazing. Building up to GT4, obviously the start of that season was you know incredible. We swept the first weekend of the VP Racing Challenge at the Rohwer in Tacoma. Kicked off the program in an awesome way. Came out the gate strong. A lot of success with the GT4. We cannot miss any of that. Yes yeah and not just here at an IMSA VP Challenge, the Pilot Challenge. Globally as well, cars doing really strongly in Australia and FDL in Canada. So globally the customers have loved the car. We love to see it and getting some really great results in championships around the world. And looking at the marquee program, it had some amazing heritage-based liveries that came out middle of the season as well. Going from strength to strength. Getting to spray champagne on podiums now is becoming a comfortable part of expectations. You, Multimatic, a great partner. Tell folks about the reception that you've seen to the GT3 again. This kind of marquee up in the loving these cars. It's been hugely positive for us to see the reaction of the fans around the world and here at IMSA. It's something that is very relatable. Everyone knows someone who has a Mustang or has owned a Mustang in the past. So everyone loves Mustang and we've seen that fan reception everywhere we've gone. It's been amazingly positive and seeing people excited about seeing the big blue GT3 Mustangs on track and seeing the GT4 Mustangs. It's truly an accessible form of sports car racing. People can relate to it, which is awesome. Let's close on this, Alex. One of Mr. France's and the Bishop's founding beliefs for IMSA was we're going to have factories, there's going to be amazing high-level competition, but we never want to forget that there are dreamers at home who want to be a driver, an owner, an engineer, a mechanic. They have to have a home in IMSA as well. So Mustang Challenge, perfect kind of entryway into that family. GT4 as well. Even in GT3, customer teams. Tell us about that side because while this is the shiny, sparkly, beautiful thing, the customer aspect of what Ford does is massive. Excellent. So this is the Atarian Compass, our shining star. But really what we've built is the pyramid and the ladder system go from all the way from Mustang Challenge up into the GT3 series. So we've been really excited about not only getting drivers and engineers experience, we've seen engineers who started in the Mustang Challenge paddock before working their way into GT4 and GT3 paddocks. You see it with drivers as well. We have Sam Paley making a GT4 debut, obviously had a very successful season in Mustang Challenge this year, racing GT4 this weekend with MMR in the third team car. So seeing that whole pyramid, that ladder, is really exciting for us. And that's what we're trying to build. So you can start in Mustang Challenge, you can work your way up to GT4, and ultimately you have a chance of either racing in a Ford GT3 car or a customer GT3 car, but making it to that top level in the WeatherTech series is something that we're really excited about. The great state of Michigan, so ably represented here by our friends at Ford Performance. Only more and more Mustangs coming to IMSA paddocks, along with all the other amazing brands as well. 2024 has been a beautiful thing, a lot more to come in 2025. Alex, thank you so much. Thank you, appreciate it.