FORD has announced its Gen3 Supercars prototype will appear in S650 specification at the Repco Bathurst 1000 next month.
The long-awaited conversion from the S550 design is currently taking place at the Stapylton headquarters of homologation team Dick Johnson Racing.
The October 6-9 event at Mount Panorama will mark the first time Ford’s new Mustang will appear in a physical capacity at any motorsport event in the world.
With alterations also being completed with respect to the Gen3 front-end clip, Ford Performance Motorsports global director Mark Rushbrook declared the Bathurst showcase will be the final version of its new Supercar, save for any modifications that come out of VCAT testing in November.
GALLERY: The all-new Ford Mustang Supercar
Rushbrook noted two separate aero programs had been completed to get to this point.
“I mean, it was the same team, the same people involved, but honestly when we started it, we weren’t sure on the timing of Gen3 and we weren’t sure on the timing of the road car,” he said.
“At one point, there was potential that we would have been racing the sixth-generation Mustang, so we did put full effort into that, just in case it did race.
“And also because we knew we would learn from it, from the team going through it, just in terms of learning the process with Supercars as well as learning the sensitivities.
“There is enough significant difference in the new seventh-generation Mustang that it was an all-new program.
“Again, the same engineers so they were able to carry over some of the learnings from it and do it probably more efficiently, but both were important for us to do it properly.
“We learned a lot and I think we have got a really good car now because of it.”
American-based Rushbrook won’t attend the Bathurst 1000 but hopes to make the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship finale at Adelaide on December 1-4.
“I can’t 100 percent commit to it but I do have Adelaide pencilled in,” he said.
“I saw the first race of the current Mustang at Adelaide and I’d love to see the last race and everybody else over there. So we’ll see if we can make that happen.”
As for the Blue Oval’s new GT3 Mustang, there’s no exact timeframe yet on when that might tackle Bathurst’s 12 Hour event.
“We’re still looking at what our rate and flow is going to be for the actual build of the Mustang GT3 car to confirm how fast we’re going to be able to get cars out to different parts of the world,” said Rushbrook.
“Obviously with supply chain issues as we see in our production cars, we have the same concerns even when we’re building at a low volume like GT3.
“So as we get a good line of sight on that, as we’re building the cars about a year from now, we want to get them out to the most important races as quickly as we can.
“So I can’t commit at this point when we would have a Mustang GT3 competing at Bathurst but it is at the very top of our list.”
