A supercar is a living, breathing machine. Just like a prize fighter, or competition stallion, it’s bred for maximum performance and capability. But imagine if your prize fighter was restricted? Like fighting with its hand tied behind back. This is a scenario that happens in auto racing. Motor companies are held back by regulations enforced by global racing sanctions — and it’s known as the balance of power.
Now this creates an equal playing field among the different racing classes and the cars within them, so most manufacturers design their street supercars to naturally fall into these classes. But what if you take that same street-able race car, and uncap the restrictions? This is what Ford Motor Company has done with the new GT MK II.
Revealed during the Goodwood “Festival of Speed,” the new GT was unleashed with a full send. Which is appropriate in the given scenario; and as it climbed up the hill, screeching its tires through the corners, from afar, it looked just like its predecessor, but up close, you’ll see it’s a different animal.
“The Mk II answers the regularly asked question of how would the car perform with all the limitations lifted: the answer is spectacularly.” These are the words of Larry Holt, Multimatics Chief Technical Officer. In fact, the new GT was co-developed by Multimatic with Ford Motor company. And if you don’t know who Multimatic is, well — they’re big into racing.
So together, they’ve pushed the new GT to it’s full capability. The twin turbo, 3.5 liter V6 that previously put out 500 horses is now putting out 700 horsepower. The aerodynamics have been upgraded to produce over 400 percent more downforce, and pull over 2 G’s of lateral grip.
They even cut over 200 pounds of weight from the car by removing the hydraulic suspension and replacing it with mechanical. And removing the lumbar seats and putting in a single racing seat. The passenger side is an option.
Then there’s the and added performance enhancers such as a new racing tune, upgraded ceramic brakes, a redesigned air intake system and even water sprayers on the intercoolers to keep the intake heat down. Overall, they turned the new GT into what should have been produced in the first place.
But why wait until now?
Lets circle back to the topic of racing sanctions. Since the fall of 2018, the FIA World Endurance Championship announced they would be developing a new Hypercar class that manufacturers can race an unrestricted street car in, as long as there are 25 of the cars in production. The previous Ford GT was produced for the GT3 race class, which is a restricted class. Are you seeing where this is going?
Many say that the new GT will be Ford Motor Company’s new racecar for the new WEC Hypercar class. Of course, Ford has not officially announced this strategy, but teaming up with Multimatic is almost dead giveaway; and the fact that Ford is only producing only a limited amount of 45 vehicles that are sold at 1.5 million a piece — that’s a pretty good racing fund.
Photo Credits: Ford Motor Company Media Center – https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019/07/04/limited-edition-ford-gt.html
