Ford is organising an in-house race crew based mostly within the UK to run its Hypercar programme within the World Endurance Championship from 2027.
The America producer introduced on Thursday that the race programme with a brand new LMDh developed along with ORECA can be operated by Ford Racing fairly than in partnership with an unbiased crew.
Mark Rushbrook, international director of Ford Racing, mentioned: “Breaking from the normal mannequin of many producers – and infrequently our personal mannequin previously – Ford Racing will oversee and handle each facet of our prototype sportscar racing undertaking.
“We aren’t trying exterior our partitions to seek out who can run a programme for us; we’re trying inside Ford Racing to construct our programmes infused with our ardour.
“At Ford Racing, competitors runs by means of our veins and, as ‘America’s Race Group’, it appears solely proper that we feature the banner ourselves.”
Rushbrook added that the transfer “offers us the flexibility to react extra rapidly on observe, enhancing our competitiveness” and “permits us to convey expertise again to our highway vehicles extra successfully and effectively than ever earlier than”.
Ford has confirmed that the race crew can be based mostly within the UK at a brand new facility in Banbury.
Witney-based motorsport consultancy group Enterprise Engineering will present what it known as “technical and operational assist”.
Dan Sayers, Ford Hypercar Program Supervisor
Picture by: Ford Efficiency
The brand new crew can be masterminded by Dan Sayers, who was introduced because the LMDh programme supervisor on the Le Mans 24 Hours WEC spherical in June.
It can utilise all the worldwide assets below the Ford Racing banner, together with its US services in Dearborn, Michigan and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Purple Bull Ford Powertrains, which is creating the brand new Ford-badged System 1 engine that may come on stream subsequent season, was additionally identify checked.
Rushbrook highlighted the challenges of going it alone in working its new LMDh, which is being developed along side ORECA Motorsport in France.
“Between now and the 2027 WEC season opening spherical, we might want to not solely construct the automotive itself however each a part of the crew as properly,” he mentioned.
“Each position must be stuffed and that’s no small activity as a result of we aren’t simply filling the positions, we’re constructing a crew tradition which mirrors that of Ford Racing: passionate and pushed by a have to be the perfect.”
He defined that Ford is already “talking to prime improvement engineers and technicians to workers our testing and race programmes”.
Ford introduced its choice to enter the Hypercar ranks with an LMDh in 2027 on the finish of January this yr.
It subsequently confirmed at Le Mans in June that it had partnered with ORECA to develop the automotive, in addition to the recruitment of Sayers.
The Briton was introduced in from Purple Bull, the place he was latterly head of the powertrain division arrange in 2021 to take over improvement of the Honda F1 engine, and beforehand labored for Prodrive on its Aston Martin Racing programmes.
He headed up improvement of the Vantage GTE and GT3 racers that got here on stream respectively in 2018 and ’19.
Ford has but to verify the configuration of the inner combustion factor of the LMDh powerplant, solely that it is going to be developed in-house.
It has, nevertheless, dropped heavy hints that it is going to be naturally-aspirated fairly than a turbocharged engine.
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