The American will return to the famous Aussie race for a second year running to defend the Production 4WD title alongside son Byam in the Ford Performance Ranger Raptor.

The car, run by Walkinshaw Performance, won on debut last year and has been improved and refined since.

It may face stiffer opposition this year, though, with GM also fielding a local factory-backed entry – a Chevrolet Silverado ZR2 driven by Lowndes and Dale Moscatt.

Lovell is looking forward to the battle, acknowledging that GM’s presence should help push the Ford squad.

“I’m really excited to have some proper competition out there,” he told Speedcafe.

“When you have a competitor like that it makes you think more when you are strategising, when you are preparing, and of course when you are racing. It makes it much more interesting to keep us on point.

“No matter what, when we are out racing I want to go run as hard as we can in the Ranger Raptor, but this is really going to hold us to task, and we are going to have to watch our pace and work on our strategy during pre-running to ensure we are error free and running as fast as we can.”

Playing a part of the continuation of a classic Aussie Blue vs Red rivalry is not lost on Lovell either.

“I spent some time in Australia many years ago, and I was in enough circles to see the Holden and Ford influence in the V8 Supercars at the time,” he said. “And I keep an eye enough on Supercars that I know that there is quite a rivalry going on!

“It is the same over here in North America as well, though. My family have always grown up as Ford people.

“I was just telling one of my neighbours that I was headed to Australia to race against the Chevy, and he responded, ‘well, I’m a Chevy guy!’.

“We’ve always been Ford, and it goes hand-in-hand with what we are about, so it is an honour to represent Ford. We are all about competition, and very much look forward to it on race day.”

Prologue kicks off tomorrow before the first leg from Alice Springs to Aputula on Sunday and the return on Monday.