Triple Eight will rekindle its relationship with the Blue Oval next year in a landmark deal that will include homologation duties for the Mustang Supercar.
While that will be the focus in at least the mid-term, there is already a bigger picture in the works for Triple Eight.
The logical tie-up beyond Supercars is in GT racing, particularly now T8 has wound back the Mercedes-AMG program it was running in GT World Challenge Australia and Asia in recent years.
Ford GT4 cars have already hit Aussie shores, with the T8 deal opening the door for the Mustang GT3 to join its smaller sibling in the region.
And that’s not all that’s in Whincup’s sights, with plans to “annoy” Ford’s motorsport boss Mark Rushbrook with ideas outside of Supercars.
“The main focus at the moment is the Mustang Gen3 Supercars program, of course, but we really want to be a performance partner of Ford Performance for a long time to come,” he told Speedcafe.
“We understand that we’ve got to gain that trust, gain that respect, and over the next two or three years, we’d love to get involved.
“We’ll be knocking on the door. Mark will be annoyed at me because I’ll be ringing him every five minutes to say, you know, what about Mustang Challenge? What about GT racing? What about the Finke Desert Race?
“We want to be a real performance partner down under and share that experience across multiple levels of motorsport.”
Ford has run an in-house program at the last two Finke Desert Races, winning the production classes on both occasions with the Ranger Raptor.
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