It’s been one of Aussie motorsport’s poorly kept secrets for quite some time now. A brand new one-make customer racing series is headed our way.
The Mustang Cup.
Ford hopes to have a full field of the bespoke Dark Horse R race cars competing as soon as next year, pending approvals from Motorsport Australia.
The cars will be available to purchase via Australia’s Multimatic agents Andrew and George Miedecke and cost just under US$160,000.
Beyond that few details have been locked in.
It is currently unknown precisely where the Mustang Cup will race, with a six-round target, but no advanced talks on what undercard it could fall on.
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According to Ford Australia spokesman Ben Nightingale, a Supercars support slot is the obvious initial target, however the SRO-run SpeedSeries is attractive as well.
“In Australia, in motorsport, for eyeballs, TV, all of this things, Supercars is obviously the big show,” said Nightingale.
“Having said that, the SRO SpeedSeries is now doing a really good job. They’re building s really good program, they’ve got a good TV program, so realistically you can go in many directions.”
Given there is already what many consider a glut of race categories in Australia, a worthwhile question is whether we need another one.
According to Nightingale that was a consideration of Ford, however the Blue Oval is confident there is a market between Toyota’s GR Cup and Super2.
“You’ve got to do an analysis of the landscape and you’ve got to see whether there is actually a market for it,” he said. “And what we’ve discovered is that there absolutely is.
“What we’re being told is that this thing will slot in above Toyota 86s.
“There are a lot of guys currently racing Carrera Cup and the feedback we’re getting is that that’s getting extremely expensive. So this could offer a really good option for those junior drivers looking for the next step and might not be able to pull together the budget for a Super2 season or a Carrera Cup season.
“This is going to give them a slick tyre, 500-horsepower V8, rear-wheel-drive, heavy car, stick shift, all those things that are going to teach them the race craft and all of the skills they will need to race anything, anywhere.”
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