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Dick Johnson Racing CEO Ryan Story has opened up for the first time about his excitement around the long-awaited Ford engine to debut in Supercars under Gen3 regulations.
Engine-related focus in recent months has mostly centred on the General Motors product, given there was an element of uncertainty regarding what would power the new Chevrolet Camaro.
While it’s long been known Ford would field a 5.4-litre variant of its Coyote engine, General Motors initially was set to run a 6.2-litre block, with two prototype engines built to that capacity.
A 5.7-litre alternative has since been confirmed, with its first track outing taking place late last month at Queensland Raceway, fitted in a Mercedes-AMG C63-bodied TA2.
Little has been said, by contrast, with relation to its Ford counterpart – until now.
Story, whose Shell V-Power Racing Team is designated as the category’s Ford homologation outfit, revealed the new Coyote had been almost a decade in the making.
“I remember first going into DJR back in 2012 and there was a dry-sumped Coyote engine with an eight-butterfly manifold on it, and the team had sat the engine in the engine bay of a Car of the Future chassis,” he told Speedcafe.com.
“So, a Coyote-based variant for Supercar use has been something at the forefront of (Mostech owner/general manager) Steve Amos and (Mostech project manager) Bobby Ervin’s mind and a focus for Mostech Race Engines for quite some time.
“And it’s a perfect opportunity to introduce not only their extensive knowledge of that engine both in its 5.0-litre guise and its 5.2-litre guise and then with the modified crank, to utilise that expertise to assemble a fantastic race engine.
“And that’s precisely what they have done, and they have done that in conjunction with Ford Performance.
“It’s a cost-effective engine, it’s a proven engine and it’s something that we’re really excited about. It’s been a great part of this process.”
His reference to the engine being proven is given its similarity to other Mostech-developed products and the learnings associated with those projects.
“We’ve worked very closely with Supercars in particular and there’s been compromises on both sides from both homologation teams and their engine suppliers to come as close as possible,” Story added.
“There’s still an enormous amount of work to do, but truth be told, the starting point for us has been somewhat easier than that of the GM side.”
All in all, it has Story confident of what they’ll roll out when Gen3 debuts – at this stage in August 2022.
“We are quite advanced with the Gen3 prototype build,” he said.
“Every component that we have available for that prototype has been fitted to the car so the build side of things is relatively advanced, and we’ve completed two of the Gen3-spec engines.
“They’ve run on the Supercars dyno, and we know already from our long extensive history and from Mostech’s long extensive history from working with that engine, it gives us a great degree of confidence even before we have an opportunity to really go track testing with it and do full durability testing with it.”
The 2021 Repco Supercars Championship is currently on an extended mid-season break, with the next event due to take place at Winton Motor Raceway on October 2-3.
