On the heels of the release of the 2024 Ford Mustang this week, Ford announced it’s going back to LeMans with the seventh generation Stang. Promising to “go like hell” once again, Ford said it plans to return to Circuit de la Sarthe in 2024.
Ford’s history at the French track is the stuff of legend, beginning with a more or less shoestring operation run by Carroll Shelby in the mid-’60s. By now you have all seen the movie, but the short version is Dearborn hired a wily Texan to build them a Ferrari-dominating prototype out of a Los Angeles airplane hangar. Spoiler alert: He developed the GT40 and showed Enzo which was way up.
The Mustang ran at LeMans in 1967 and 1997, but to much less fanfare. In 2024, Ford is pinning its hopes on a factory-backed GT3 program. The Mustang GT3 cars will also run in IMSA competition starting at the 2024 Daytona 24 Hours, and the cars will be available to privateer teams.
Say what you will about how the new Mustang looks, and badger all you want to that it hasn’t materially changed in a few generations. In this day and age, though, we’d take a V8-powered stick-shift coupe with a factory racing program even if it looked Sprinter van.
