MUSTANG GTVSGT4 RACE CAR
It was the British Alan Mann Racing team that delivered the Mustang’s first ever competition victory on the Tour de France Auto, way back in 1964. European Touring Car and British Saloon Car Championship wins followed, starting a competition history that is still being added to today.
Ford introduced a right-hand-drive version of its latest S550 Mustang to world markets late in 2015, and well over 10,000 examples are now on UK roads. More than 50,000 have been sold across Europe, adding to its title as the world’s best-selling sports car. In its remarkable 56th year of continuous production, racing Mustangs are proving as fierce a foe as ever on the world’s racing circuits, particularly in championships such as British GT and European GT4 racing.
Mustang road cars need to meet different emissions and homologation standards in order to be sold globally; likewise GT race championships have their own sets of rules. The similarity between road and race homologation breaks down at this point; for road use, manufacturers need to accommodate different customs and local regulations for things like lighting and ‘drivehanding’. In the racing world, sanctioning bodies seek to standardise and maximise eligibility across the globe. No such need to accommodate left- and right-hand drive in international motorsport – all Mustang GT4 race cars come in LHD.
The SRO Motorsports-sanctioned GT championships are run to a ‘balance of performance’ (BoP) formula. Under that BoP, the power, torque, weight and aerodynamic characteristics of each participating model are inspected, measured, analysed and then compared on track by a pair of independent drivers
