GT500 Pair Goes Head-to-head with Savage Ford GT
2020 GT500 goes on a wild racing adventure with a 2018 Ford GT but can it keep up?
On paper, the Shelby Mustang GT500 is less than half a second slower to 60 MPH than the 2018 Ford GT. So, that begs the question, when stock examples of each car go head to head, which comes out on top?
Lucky for us, Brooks Weisblat and his YouTube channel Drag Times has an answer for us. Weisblat owns the yellow Ford GT you see in the video. He also has a GT500 on order but does not yet have it. Instead, they travel to Palm Beach Dyno to meet up with Ken Bjonnes, who recently acquired his GT500.
“Both are kind of track cars. This one (GtT500) has dedicated launch control; it’s got line lock. This is like an all-around great car for drag racing and road course,” says Weisblat.
He goes on to call the GT a “one-trick pony,” referencing how its sole purpose is to be fast around a track. Nonetheless, both cars have launch control, so they decide to line them up for a couple of races from a dig.
This video taught us a couple of new things about the GT500, too. Bjonnes walks us through adjusting the GT500’s launch control RPM via the instrument cluster. However, when Weisblat asks how to work the launch control, Bjonnes reveals that the car actually won’t let you use it until the transmission is at 150 degrees. Smart move by Ford engineers, for sure.
“Once it’s up to 150 degrees, you’ll see a little LC here next to the speedo. Once you see the LC, just hold your foot on the brake and floor it, then once you let off the brake is goes,”
Furthermore, we learned that if you turn the traction control off, it disables launch control. While that sounds a bit tragic initially, watching this car launch with traction control on and hearing how much throttle modulation the car is doing to keep the tires from spinning makes us think this is a good idea. We’ve all seen the Mustang crash videos. The GT500 doesn’t need to be the star of those any time soon.
In the first race, the GT500 uses the launch control set at 3,200 RMP. While Weisblat explains they should do this to make is somewhat equal as the GT uses a 3,100 RPM launch control setup, this puts the Mustang at a disadvantage. Because of the instant torque the V8 and supercharger provides, the Mustang wants nothing more than to spin those tires. Thus, launching at this high on this surface causes the computer to do a lot of correcting to put the power down.
Over the next few races, this becomes more evident as they drop the launch control progressively down to 1,800 RPM. Each time, the Mustang’s tach bounces up and down as it fights for traction. At 1,800 RPM is had it’s best start, but it still chokes up with traction and the traction control system seems to be keeping it at bay. Clearly, the GT has a bit more traction in this particular case.
The argument for lack of traction becomes more evident when he races another GT500. This particular one was tuned by Bjonnes’ shop and makes roughly 30-40 more horsepower than stock. That is just enough to cause it to come up even shorter than the stock one against the GT.
The GT itself didn’t see to have much trouble at all gaining traction. In fact, Weisblat used a Dragy, which is a GPS based performance meter that data-logs things like 0-60 time and quarter-mile times. The GT still manages to sprint to 60 MPH in just 3.59 seconds. That is pretty remarkable, considering all the dust in the road you can see the cars kicking up.
After the races and a fantastic demo of the GT500’s line-lock feature, Weisblast discusses the GT500’s faults. One major flaw they bring up is the delay between taking your foot off the brake and the car launching.
“It’s got like a quarter-second lag. To get the tree for drag racing, the Mustang guys for this car are going to have to really anticipate the light,” says Weisblat
Overall, it seems the GT is the winner here. Rightfully so, as it costs over $300,000 more than a GT500. However, we would like to see them both run in a situation where they have good traction, and it sounds like Weisblat intends to do precisely that.