FORD global CEO Jim Farley has turned his first laps in a Ford Mustang Supercar ahead of his scheduled appearance at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Farley is slated to drive the former Dick Johnson Racing chassis at the event, which this year pays tribute to Roger Penske as part the theme ‘The Maestros – Motorsport’s Great All-Rounders’.
The chassis in question is DJR FG19, a Supercar that remained in the United States following Team Penske’s exit from Dick Johnson Racing and the championship at the end of last season.
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The car was originally a Ford Falcon that DJR Team Penske shipped to the US in 2015 with Supercars’ approval as part of a pilot plan to build chassis off-shore.
The move was soon scuppered by a rule change for 2016 preventing cars from being built outside of Australia, and the chassis placed into storage at Team Penske’s Mooresville, NC headquarters.
The car emerged at the start of 2019 having been converted to the new Ford Mustang GT body style – albeit with several modifications to prevent it being used for testing purposes – to serve as a US-based show car, turning laps in Ryan Briscoe’s hands at Virginia International Raceway during that year.
Farley’s laps came at the M1 Concourse private motorsport club facility in Pontiac, Michigan; on the same day, Penske himself also turned 25 laps in the 2008 Porsche RS Spyder LMP2 car that he is slated to drive up the Goodwood hillclimb this July.
“I needed to get ready, and Jim Farley is going to drive the McLaughlin Supercar over there at the same time, so he was there also with us and he had a chance to exercise the Mustang,” Penske told Racer.com.
The Supercar and the Porsche RS Spyder will form part of a Team Penske car display that is set to feature several of the team’s Indianapolis 500-winning cars, including the chassis Will Power drove to victory in the 2018 event and the Penske PC23 ‘Beast’ that Al Unser Jr. used to claim the win in 1994.
