Nizer

Going to be a good season for American road racing...

ProCoach

Agreed!

Cory M

Looking forward to it! Ironic, and sad, that the GT cars in the US are more technologically advanced and sexier than the "prototypes".

Alexandrius

When I see or hear the term "Ecoboost" on anything ford I lose my mind and become completely disinterested. It's a ****ing turbo guys, call it what the **** it is. Holy ****. Marketing bull**** isn't worth being such PC artificial douches. That is how I really feel. I'm going to have a drink now.

Nizer

I just call it a race car. Look forward to seeing how it measures up.

Cory M

If the Ford GT is dominant could it spell the end of LMGT / GTE as we know it? The chassis design and aero of the GT doesn't appear to have as many compromises as their production based competition. Basically a racecar that satisfies homologation requirements. Reminds of the Porsche GT1 and Mercedes CLK, prototypes classed as GT cars through clever interpretation of the rules. The CLK LM won so many races that all of the competitors pulled out and the class died. If the Ford GT dominates the competing factories either have to significantly invest in building a better car, like racing the 918 and La Ferrari, or shift focus on the lower level GT classes. Of course having a fast car is only part of the equation in endurance racing. It will be fun watching it play out.

ProCoach

On the one hand, I wanted to begin a response with "today's Prototype is far from the ox cart that they used to be," but then I saw your second post.

Don't confuse FIA GT1 (which allowed those amazing Mercedes, Porsches and Maseratis with just as you say, a few "homologation specials") with IMSA...

Ford will NOT walk this because Daytona Beach will not allow it. Look what they did to Astons and Corvette last year, and Porsche before that... BOP, baby!

The problem is they don't tell the manufacturers when and whether it's their time "in the barrel..."

Veloce Raptor

Nizer

AKA non-spec spec racing.....

wanna911

Exactly. IMSA will keep handicapping them until whatever other factory team they choose to win.......wins. There is no such thing as domination in IMSA.

ProCoach

Everyone does that. The old BPR series, Blancpain Sprint and Endurance series, PWC, the ACO, even Andy Evans in the early days of the reborn IMSA. There's some discussion of this "balancing" effort by the FIA occurring in F1!

Not passing judgement, just saying that there is always been a tug of war between (especially) factory backed teams and sanctioning bodies to maintain SOME competitive balance...

PPo

Well I never... How dare you!

I agree, it happens in all racing. Some are more obvious than others. Some teams are also just really good at playing politics with the rules, some teams always seem to lose. For example, I am a huge Ferrari F1 fan, but they really took advantage of the Bridgestone years... and Ross Brawn continued to use his engineering skill and political strength to win a championship with Button and the double diffuser. Politics is part of pro racing, and always will be...

No question that Ford will have a successful year with the GT. I hope they have some solid competition.

As a side note, the RealTime Racing Honda/Acura in the SpeedVision series a few years ago drove me nuts... Yes the team was very well prepared and had good drivers... but allowing a supercharger on the NSX so it can compete was a little odd. Their other cars in the class below always finished suspiciously well no matter how well prepared competitors arrived. My sense always was that RealTime Racing was too close to the rules and took good advantage of the relationship. Plenty examples of this in racing history I am sure...

PPo

Cool to see Mosport in some of the shots... Is Multimatic involved with the prep of this car?!?

ProCoach

They're building it and partially staffing the effort...