Ford says customer interest strong for Mustang GT3, but it has no plans for GTP

At the current rate of interest, Ford and chassis production partner Multimatic will be busy fulfilling orders for their new Mustang GT3 model that is coming for the 2024 season.

Announced last month at the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Ford confirmed the long-anticipated plans to bring its new 2024 Mustang design to the global GT3 racing marketplace along with returning to IMSA with a two-car factory Mustang effort led by Multimatic in the GTD Pro class. According to Ford Performance director Mark Rushbrook, reaction to the Mustang GT3’s availability has already surpassed expectations.

“I would say it’s been very amazing from people that want to buy the car as customers and go race,” Rushbrook told RACER. “Even the reaction inside our company has been big; only a few people knew about this program internally. And as we told the world, we also told all of our company, and it was posted on the homepage and just seeing all the positive reactions… It’s such a point of pride for our company, for our employees, so many of them are excited about this.

“Even our competitors — the other manufacturers are excited that we are coming to race with them in this GT3 space. We’re excited to go race with them as well. So I think it’s going to be really good that we’ll be able to have a great GT3 car with Multimatic and M Sport doing the engines. I think we will sell a lot of these cars to customers, and there will be a lot of Mustang GT3s racing around the world. A lot of our fans are going to be really happy about that.”

Identical to what’s coming with the Mustang GT3, Ford introduced its new GT supercar along with a factory racing program in 2016 that saw the diminutive coupe win the GTE Pro class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on its debut — 50 years after Ford won the great race for the first time with the legendary GT40. By the time the Mustang GT3 is ready to race, there’s a decent chance the rule makers behind the Le Mans event will allow GT3 cars to compete at the 24-hour race, and it’s here where Rushbrook would love to make more history with Ford and its most iconic model.

“Bringing the GT back to race in 2016 was such a big program for our company,” he said. “It was the 50-year anniversary. But to me in many ways, taking the Mustang racing in this space is as big or maybe bigger, because of what the Mustang has meant, both in our history of a road car Mustang and where it’s raced everywhere else. To now be able to race in the biggest races in sports car racing is such a such a great opportunity for the company.”

One thing the Blue Oval won’t be doing, however, is commissioning a new Mustang GTP car in the near future or supplying engines to another manufacturer for its GTP program.

“We love what they’re doing with the class, love the GTP name, but in terms of doing only a motor program, that’s not something that we would be interested in, quite honestly — we’d want to do it completely,” Rushbrook said. “I don’t think we’re ready are in a position to say anything about any future programs there. Our focus right now is we’ve got this approval for the Mustang GT3 inside our company and with provisional approval from the FIA to go homologate it.”