DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Just imagine that your cellphone vibrates moments after your Ford Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 drops from second to fourth during the Chevrolet Grand Prix due to a malfunctioning fuel rig. The phone’s display informs you the caller is Jim Farley, CEO of Ford.
“Jim says, ‘Why are you having problems with your fuel rig?’” recalls Larry Holt, Multimatic’s executive vice president of Special Vehicle Operations. “This is the CEO of Ford asking what’s wrong with our fuel rig. Which is a good thing. I mean it’s a bad thing at the moment but it’s a good thing in that he’s so into it.”
That Ford’s boss was closely following the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) competition at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park offers a hint of the capital – coin of the realm and reputation-wise – Ford invests in its global racing programs.
In the case of the WeatherTech Championship, the buck stops with suburban Toronto-based Multimatic, Inc. – specifically, Holt.
“It’s Ford,” Holt says. “They have all these expectations. Even though Jim Farley is a racer and understands it’s the first year for this car, he still says, ‘What’s going on here, Larry?’”
This is nothing new, of course. While there are as many non-disclosure agreements with the world’s automotive giants in Multimatic’s legal files as there are plaques honoring Multimatic patents adorning the company’s walls, Multimatic Motorsports enjoys a unique relationship with Ford. Multimatic Mustangs, after all, were a mainstay of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge for many seasons, and the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT that scored a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 50 years to the day after Ford bested Ferrari in “La Ronde Infernale” was built and developed by Multimatic.
Transition to Customer Race Car Developer Alters Process
There are fundamental differences between the Ford GT and Mustang GT3 programs, however. The Ford GT was designed as a race car that, eventually, evolved into an exotic road car. In contrast, the Mustang GT3 is based on the seventh-generation Mustang road car. Equally significant, Multimatic is producing Mustang GT3s in volume (at least in racing terms) for sale to privateer teams, witness Proton Competition fielding a Mustang in the WeatherTech Championship’s Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class.
However, the customer car dimension brings inherent compromises.
“Because we were obligated to sell the car, we did all our testing in Europe with potential customers,” Holt says. “As a race team owner, I would have preferred to do private testing. But as a guy trying to build a car to sell, you’ve got to cater to the customers. And they want to do this and they want to do that, and after two and a half days of a three-day test, they say, ‘Yeah, we’ll buy a car.’ So, good. But we’ve got next to nothing done actually developing the car.
“And we don’t have a private test track. If Porsche or Ferrari have a problem, they go back to the factory and the next day there’s a guy out running around with the fix. We don’t have that. We’ve got trailers going all over from Spain to Portugal, France and Germany, and by the end of (2023) we were at Daytona for all the testing and we thought we were OK.”
Hardly had the first green flag of 2024 waved when the Mustang GT3 experienced problems that had never occurred in testing. If there was destined to be good and bad during the Chevrolet Grand Prix, the Rolex 24 At Daytona was downright ugly. How ugly? How about the rear deck lids blowing off the Multimatic Mustangs before sundown?
“We’d done 10,000 miles of testing and never had a deck lid blow off,” Holt says. “But we were testing by ourselves. Then you get on banks with a bunch of other cars and there it goes.
“So, we had to beg on bended knees to get the two latches accepted by the sanctioning bodies. Then we get to Sebring and somebody rubs us up the side and the whole back end of the car comes off. Which happened again at Road America where the Aston Martin hooked into our rear wheel opening and just ripped the whole back of the body off the car. Again! So embarrassing.”
Not that Holt is a glass half empty kind of guy. He recognizes the Mustang GT3’s substantial progress throughout what became a season of testing on race weekends.
“Because we’re in limited testing time, now we’re doing the development on race weekends,” he says. “But there is real progress and we do have some customers, although Proton are like brothers more than customers. And we got a car on the podium at Le Mans (with Proton) the first time. That podium at Le Mans kept everybody satiated a bit.”
Results Are Coming in WeatherTech Championship
Presumably, the steady improvement in WeatherTech Championship performance and results further satiated at least some of the interested observers. Sixth place for a Ford Multimatic Mustang in Detroit, fifth at Watkins Glen, fourth (that might have been P2) at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. The trend has clearly been going in the right direction.
“If somebody plotted our performance and results, we are getting there,” says Holt. “With the car we have now, it comes down to execution.”
Although the execution was lacking during Multimatic’s home race at CTMP in July, it was much improved throughout the Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway in August. There, the Proton Racing GTD Ford Mustang earned the car’s first pole in competition worldwide, while the Multimatic Mustangs swept the second row of the GTD PRO grid. Although the Proton Mustang slipped to seventh on race day, Multimatic’s pony cars finished second and fourth in class.
“This weekend for the Mustang has been super strong,” said Harry Tincknell, who, with Mike Rockenfeller, is co-driver of the No. 64 Ford Multimatic Mustang that has secured three top-five GTD PRO finishes in the past four races. “GTD pole yesterday for Proton and podium for us today in GTD PRO. Obviously, it’s a brand-new car. We’re taking giant leaps. … We’ve just gradually been getting better and better, and this has been coming.”
Given their pace at fast, furious and hilly VIR, one might imagine the Ford Multimatic and Proton Mustangs will be on the pace during the Motul Petit Le Mans at fast, furious and hilly Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. But before the season finale there’s the small matter of the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Will it be a case of good, bad or ugly for the Mustang GT3?
“The fact that we’re going to test at both circuits before the races is really going to help,” says Tincknell. “With every race we just improve, improve, improve a little bit. We’d love to get that first win this year and carry that into the offseason. All the boys and girls deserve it with all the hours they’re putting in. The backing from Ford is unbelievable; it’s a family company, they’re encouraging us all the time, and that first win is just around the corner.”