Ford confirms Mustang will race at Le Mans

Ford will return to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the freshly revealed seventh-generation Ford Mustang.

Official confirmation of the racing program happened in Detroit at the launch of the latest generation pony car, as well as the reveal of the more powerful 2023 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.

A GT3-spec racing version of the road car has been confirmed to be in development for some time, but this is the first indicator from Ford on what categories it intends to compete in with the motorsport-prepared Mustang.

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Allowing Ford to take the Mustang to the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a rule change set to take place in the coming years where the GTE class will be replaced with a GT3-based ruleset.

“The Mustang GT3 will be eligible [for Le Mans] in 2024,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance Motorsports. “We look forward to seeing Mustang race there.”

Ford’s history at the 24 Hours of Le Mans stretches back to its debut at the endurance classic in 1964. In 1966 its GT40 sports car claimed all three podium positions in one of the event’s most iconic races.

To commemorate the anniversary of the legendary 1-2-3 finish, Ford returned to Le Mans in 2016 competing in the GTE category with its reborn GT supercar, claiming both first and third in class.

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The Mustang’s 2024 entry won’t be its first in Le Mans history, with the iconic nameplate having previously competed in both 1967 and 1997.

“Mustang is raced at all the great tracks around the world, but there is no race or track that means more to our history than Le Mans,” said Bill Ford, executive chair, at the road car’s reveal in Detroit.

“It's where we took on Ferrari and won in the 1960s and where we returned 50 years later and shocked the world again.”

A GT3-spec Mustang also opens up eligibility to compete in several other iconic endurance races. From 2024 Ford will be able to compete for outright victory at the Bathurst 12 Hour in Australia, Nürburgring 24 Hour in Germany, and Spa 24 Hour in Belgium, while contending for class honours at events like Le Mans, and the Daytona 24 Hour and Sebring 12 Hour in the USA.

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To compete, and be competitive, at Le Mans, Ford will also likely contest the entire World Endurance Championship (WEC) season. It last competed in WEC with the GT supercar in the GTE class.

The modern Ford GT program was a skunkworks project with the road car’s development following in the shadow of the racer’s primary focus – winning class honours at Le Mans on the 50th anniversary of the original GT40’s outright victory.

The GT’s official factory racing program, competing both natively in North America’s IMSA championship and WEC, was ended in 2019.

Since then, the GTE category the GT competed in has seen gradually diminishing field sizes, and is set to be replaced by the similar but subtly different GT3 ruleset in 2024.

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While GT3 cars will be eligible, there are still some final details of the rulebook that are yet to be finalised before 2024, such as how the Balance of Performance will be homologated.

A number of racing variants of the new Mustang were shown as renderings at the car’s reveal in Detroit. Along with the GT3-spec racer that will compete at Le Mans, the Gen3 Supercar was shown which will debut locally next year.