Ford’s return to top-tier endurance racing has been building for over a year, but this is the first real look at the finished package — both how it sounds and how it’s shaped — ahead of its competitive debut next spring. The car pairs a 5.4-liter naturally aspirated V8, derived from the same Coyote architecture found in the Mustang, with a hybrid system to reach the LMDh class’s maximum permitted output of 670 hp.
Going Against The Grain On Engine Choice
Several of Ford’s WEC rivals have gone the turbocharged-six route for their hypercar programs, but Ford is sticking with the same naturally aspirated approach it’s favored throughout development, reasoning that skipping turbos and intercoolers keeps the package simpler to run reliably across a 24-hour race. It’s not alone in that logic — Cadillac’s V-Series.R and Aston Martin’s Valkyrie AMR-LMH both skip turbos too — but Ford’s road-going Coyote heritage gives the choice an extra layer of brand storytelling that a clean-sheet racing engine wouldn’t. Ford has already been dyno-testing the V8 through simulated laps of Circuit de la Sarthe at its Dearborn headquarters, with the engine reportedly screaming past 9,000 rpm on full-throttle runs – and according to some footage of it (attached at the end), it sounds pretty great too.
Two Cars, Six Drivers, One Debut
Ford
Visually, the car sticks to a fairly conventional hypercar shape rather than chasing the aggressive styling of something like the Valkyrie AMR-LMH, with a front splitter, canards, a large rear wing, diffuser, and shark fin doing the aerodynamic work. Like fellow LMDh entrants Genesis and Alpine, Ford’s chassis is built on an Oreca platform, though the program itself runs almost entirely in-house under the rebranded Ford Racing division rather than being outsourced to a partner team. Ford will field two cars: one crewed by Tom Blomqvist, Nick Yelloly, and Matt Campbell, the other by Logan Sargeant, Mike Rockenfeller, and Sebastian Priaulx. Both are set to make their competitive debut at the 1,812-km (1,126-mile) Qatar round next March, the season opener for the FIA World Endurance Championship.
About the author
Yash Bajaj
News Editor