Confirmed: Ford to build new sports car, race it at Le Mans in 2016

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WyoStorm

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What channel is the race on?


#whatareicons

Rolex 24 At Daytona | International Motor Sports Association

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02 car up to 2nd in the Protype class right on the tail of that vette

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I wish they had an in-car camera in on the ecos. That's not one of the choices on the site.

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I'm seeing a Ford camera choice but it's not working.

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Not sure what happened but now what was the 2nd place eco prototype is now 10 laps down!

The two Ford GT's are just out there...26 and 37 laps back.
 
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KaiserM715

KaiserM715

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I love it that they have been live streaming it.

---------- Post added at 10:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:52 PM ----------

Not too surprised to hear of teething problems in a new race car, none of the issues have been engine related.
 

WyoStorm

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I expected a lot more with all the importance Ford put on the new GT.

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Full course caution for a broken down ford #67. The commentary is great. They are trying to be polite since ford is sponsoring the event but this is a debacle.
 

WyoStorm

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I'll have to check it out.

Broken gearbox for the #67

Now the #02 Prototype Eco just crashed into the tires. Looks like a brake issue. Being towed off right now with the big ecoboost in the window.

At least the #01 Prototype Eco is only 3 laps down. Not much left to save the day. Couldn't get much worse.

At least the Ford GTs are smoking fast when they're running! Still has the fastest lap of the day early one before all the problems.
 
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KaiserM715

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Far From Failure: What Racing the Ford GT Does for Ford

Far From Failure: What Racing the Ford GT Does for Ford

Written by Elana Scherr on February 9, 2016 Contributors: Alex Wong Despite a rough start, Ford hopes a racing program and a $400,000 street car will improve all its products View All 118 Photos

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The new Ford GT was designed in secrecy. Only people crucial to the project even knew there was a project. Meetings were held after normal working hours and were discussed in code, with no placement on official shared calendars. The design room was locked with a physical padlock rather than the standard keycard, so even operations managers didn’t know there was anything going on in the basement. The engineers risked their relationships by keeping the secret from their friends and spouses. The vast majority of Ford employees only learned about the car a day before its debut at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Soon after the unveiling, Ford announced it would race the GT and take it back to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, hopefully to recreate its famous 1966 win on the 50th anniversary of that triumph. It will be an awesome photo op, but for Ford, racing the GT is more than a PR stunt. It’s a chance to test new technologies in the fire of actual competition, on a global stage. The 24 Hours of Le Mans is still a big deal, and winning it would be a triumph for Ford—which wants its products to be compared to BMWs and Porsches in the minds of international car shoppers.
We went to the first competitive effort for the Ford GT—the 2016 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. It didn’t go well. The results—7th and 9th in an 11-car class and 31st and 40th overall—were hardly what Ford fans or Ganassi Racing were hoping for. The first gearbox issue struck the No. 67 car just 20 minutes into the 24-hour race, sending driver Ryan Briscoe into the garage with the car stuck in sixth gear. There were hopes it was an isolated incident—a bad solenoid, and Briscoe was optimistic after the car was sent back out on track. The No. 66 car avoided trouble for longer, with driver Joey Hand swapping the class lead with the Porsche and Ferrari teams for several hours until a mistake during a pit stop damaged a brake line. From then on things just got worse for both GT teams. A loose diffuser cut two tires on the No. 67 before it was pinpointed as a problem. Gearbox gremlins kept reappearing, slowing, and even stranding the cars on track. The teams kept repairing and returning to the race, but frustration was evident on every face, and the drivers went from setting the class’s race pace to just trying to make it to the checkered flag.
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Online response has been brutal, with plenty of keyboard crew chiefs holding up Ford’s problem-plagued race as proof that the program is a failure. On this, we disagree. The number of new race cars that have won their first race out wouldn’t fill a jury box, so this is normal brand new baby problems. Sure, 2016 is the anniversary of the GT40’s 1966 Le Mans win, but everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that the car made its first track appearance in 1964, and that first outing, and every one afterwards until the MkII in 1966, were disasters (coincidentally, often gearbox related disasters). The real measure of success for the modern Ford GT team will be if it can accelerate the learning curve from two years to two months, and show up at the 12 hours of Sebring in March with the problems worked out. We have faith that they can, and we know that when it’s running, the GT is competitive. While the winning Corvette had a fastest race lap of 1:44.563, the No. 67 Ford GT laid down a best lap time of 1:44.391. So, assuming that Ford doesn’t spend several hours in the garage next race, you can see we’ve got a proper competition going here.
“This has been on a napkin for a long time,” said product development vice president Raj Nair when we asked how long the GT idea has been percolating at Ford. Formally, the project started about 18 months ago with plans of racing tied in with plans of the super street car. The return of the GT has been greeted with enthusiasm, but not everyone is excited about the new version. A Ford GT club member we spoke with expressed disappointment with the engine choice. “My 2005 is what the ’60s cars were,” he said. “Big V8s, very inspired by the original car. The new one, the V6? It doesn’t sound right.”
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“This isn’t just about the past,” says Ford Performance director, Dave Pericak. The 2005-2006 return of the GT was a definite tribute car, so similar in looks to the original GT40s that you might need a double take to recognize its more modern attributes. A few have been raced, but never as a factory effort. The new GT is more of an evolution, what the GT40 might have led to if Ford continued racing it after 1968. It may share the same mid-engine layout, low-slung body and Y-shaped hood area as the previous GT-cars, but the rest of the design is high tech and forward-thinking. The goal is to develop technologies that will work in future Ford products, not just to pander to baby-boomer nostalgia.
Pericak knows there are some folks who don’t understand the reasons behind the V6, or Ford’s entering Le Mans in the lower GTLM class rather than the flashy—and faster, Prototype class, but he says it’s all part of a larger plan. “The 3.5L in the GTs on the track was tested as the EcoBoost in the [Daytona] Prototype cars Ganassi won Daytona with [in 2015]. Then the next generation became a street engine. That’s what we should be doing, using racing to improve production. That engine will go in the [F-150] Raptor, in other production vehicles. With what we spend on racing we could develop a whole new product. We need to race things that will move into production, help us train our engineers to develop new tools and understand new technology.”
So, speaking of the Ganassi Prototypes, how do those dedicated race machines compare to the “production” GTLM cars? Is the engine identical? Can the powerplants switch from one to the other? Not easily, but primarily for reasons of packaging. Internally the 3.5L in the Prototype and in the GT are the same, but they use different turbo plumbing and different turbos. Motor mounts and transmissions are not interchangeable, and the electronics between the two classes aren’t plug and play. The engines in the racing GT and the street GT are also close sisters, but not twins. Again they use different turbos and tubing, and the street car V6 will be backed by a seven-speed Getrag transmission, while the track car uses a custom Ricardo sequential gearbox.
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Even with some hardware and aero differences—most noticeable being the large fixed wing and larger carbon diffuser—the track Ford GT is remarkably similar in many respects to the upcoming street car. The road-going GT that you can buy (well, maybe not you, but some lucky, rich version of you) will have the same engine and the same basic dimensions as the GT we see on track. That’s a marked difference from, say, the Corvette C7.R, which shares little with the Z06 or Z07 you can pick up at your Chevy dealer. Pericak says the accelerated development of the GT has made the street car into a track-tested machine from day one. “One of the benefits of doing a road car and a race car at the same time is being able to take what you learn from the race car and put it into the street car during the design process.”
All that technology doesn’t come cheap, and you shouldn’t expect to see the new GT sitting amongst the Mustangs and F150s at the Ford dealership. Would-be GT owners will need to apply and receive approval to purchase one of the 250 planned 2017 GTs, and to prevent GT scalping, Ford says it wants first-right-of-refusal on the resale of any new GT. It’s got to be a strange feeling for anyone wealthy enough to be considering the GT to be told, “Yeah, we might take your $400,000, but we might not, and also there are rules.” Ferrari has used similar buyer pre-screening techniques for its supercars since the 1995 F50.
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Desire for a new GT has led to a scramble amongst eager 2005 and 2006 owners to prove their worthiness. “We’re all trying to stand out,” said owner Brian Stormer, who owns a stable of sport and supercars, including multiple 2005/2006 GTs. Pericak says Ford wants to see the new GT get driven, so Ford GT or GT40 ownership will be taken into account when reviewing the applications, but there’s no plans for encouraging any independent GT racing teams. “For the GT350-RC, customer participation is the goal,” he told us. For the GT on track, Ford has its hands full with the factory effort.
If 250 road cars seems like a limited edition, how about a look at the race cars, of which there are currently a grand total of four, two in America and two in Europe, all built under the experienced eye of Canadian race shop Multimatic Motorsports. Ford chose Multimatic because of its familiarity with carbon fiber, which makes up the supporting structure of the GT as well as its bodywork. Chip Ganassi Racing was picked to head up the GT racing project not only for its experience with the engine, but also for Chip’s reputation with organization. Because Ford wants to run the GT in American IMSA racing and European WEC racing, it needed a leader who could work with both programs and make sure that the cars were identical and there was no wasted effort in testing and development. This includes driver training as well as technical details, and the WEC drivers and mechanics were a part of the GT’s testing before the Daytona 24 and during the race.
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Before the start of the 24 Hours of Daytona the Ford GT’s only public racetrack appearance had been the open testing at the Roar earlier in January where the cars were fast, and the drivers happy and mechanical issues were so nonexistent that the crew started worrying about how well everything was going. “Chip [Ganassi] has a lot of experience, and he’d always say he was afraid we hadn’t had too many issues,” said No. 67 driver and 12-time IMSA race winner Ryan Briscoe, discussing the unexpected problem of no problems. That’s the rub though, you can’t make a problem show itself until it’s good and ready, and the GTs on the test track, in the simulations, and at the Roar performed perfectly. Then came the green flag in the 2016 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona.
Really though, Ford should be happy about the online fracas surrounding the debut. It means people are watching the race, and actually care about which brand wins. Not only can we relive the Ford vs Ferrari battle that birthed the original GT40, but we have an American grudge match as well. Think of the bragging rights we hot rodders will have at the next Cars and Coffee when both the Corvette and the GT run down the straight at Le Mans. “This car is gonna run an American flag everywhere,” said Pericak. “It is literally red, white, and blue.”
 
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