Looks like Ford Racing hasn't stopped road racing they have just shifted emphasis to taking over a new series.

Ford Racing puts the Mustang through its paces (horrible pun) at Sebring

 

sweet!

 

Apparently it's got a Yates engine in it

 

Is that what the article was referring to when it mentioned "bending the rules"? Sorry, when I hear Yates, pushrods come to mind.

 

Is that Vista?

 

I hope that something comes of this. ALMS could definitely use the help with car count. I'm assuming that this would go into the GT2 category. Might even work in the Rolex GT class.

 

Ok after reading some of the ALMS forums this car is not going in ALMS any time soon...

It was just there for a test...

Aparently it was way slow compared to the other cars...

It had the same engine as the Panoz cars ran by Multimatic...

5.0L Ford Engines

 

Nah, I think the rules bending thing refers more to their accepting cars that might normally not be considered homologated; case in point: Maserati MC12. IIRC, the Maserati wasn't eligible under the ACO's rules, and ALMS is supposed to be running under essentially the same rules[?] but they allowed the Maserati to run events here in the US anyway. I think their reasoning was something to the effect of "...it will add diversity to the field, and will draw spectators, so let's allow it..."

Oh, and I know one way they could get the lap times to drop a little on that Mustang--and that'd be to switch from those Hoosiers to some other rubber! I have it from a reliable source that the G-Am series cars went on avg about 2 sec. a lap slower when they switched from Dunlops to Hoosiers as the spec tire--and that's across the field, not just the Mustang. Of course, I know there could be a world of changes in tire development since then [it's been a year or so? lots of test/development time], but still I wonder how the times would have looked if they were on Dunlops, Michelins, Pirellis, etc.?

 

At the Lone Star Grand Prix, I asked the Panoz pit crew what the engines wre, and they said they ran the 4.6 punched out (not stroked) to 302 ci or 5L, putting out about 450 hp.