Ford is set to bring a familiar yet invigorated presence to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2024 as the Mustang Dark Horse makes its racing debut, the manufacturer announced on Wednesday.
The Mustang Dark Horse, introduced as a street car in late 2022, represents the seventh generation of the Mustang lineage.
This milestone underscores Ford’s commitment to its Mustang heritage, with the iconic model slated to feature prominently across six continents in 2024.
“It’s been such a great car for us and a great icon for us since 1964, both as a road car and as a race car for that entire time,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports, during a teleconference with NASCAR.com.
“When we as a company made the commitment to have a seventh-generation Mustang for the road, we knew instantly in motorsports that that meant a new wave of Mustangs for us on the race track.”
Ford introduced updated versions of the Mustang for various racing series in 2023, including IMSA and Australian Supercars.
“And then, of course, our bread and butter here in the United States is NASCAR,” Rushbrook continued.
“When we switched from Fusion to Mustang in Cup in 2019, that was a big deal and something we’ve been very happy to see the success of that car.
But now to be updating this Mustang in Cup to the seventh-generation Mustang, and especially the new model with a Mustang Dark Horse, to really make a statement about what Mustang is as a road car, as a sports car and as a race car at the highest level in NASCAR is important.
“And it gives us that opportunity to continue racing Mustang in front of great fans, on great race tracks and to kind of wave the flag for the new Dark Horse version was important for us as well.”
The new Mustang Dark Horse will make its competitive debut at the exhibition Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on February 4, 2024. This updated model will feature improvements over the 2023 Mustang.
Ford’s Ryan Blaney has positioned himself as the manufacturer’s hope for a NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2023 after clinching a spot in the Championship 4 at Martinsville Speedway.
Blaney’s efforts aim to secure back-to-back driver titles for Ford, following Joey Logano’s 2022 victory.
Throughout the 2023 season, Ford drivers claimed eight wins in the 35 points-paying Cup Series races.
Highlights included three victories each for Blaney and RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher, the latter reaching the Round of 8 for the first time.
However, the season also had its challenges, with Ford managing just two wins in the first 21 races.
“We certainly had strength on certain style (of) tracks, especially superspeedways,” Rushbrook said.
“But unfortunately, superspeedways don’t always pan out. And while we had dominant cars and led the most laps in some of those races, we didn’t win all those superspeedways.
But we won some of them, and that was important. But we’ve also had some strength on the short tracks, as you’ve seen, especially what Ryan was able to do (Sunday). And we’ve had mixed success on the intermediate tracks.
“Certainly Ryan winning at the Coca-Cola 600 (at Charlotte) was an important win for him and for us and showed that the car can be competitive there but also didn’t convert at a lot of the intermediate tracks.
So that’s a lot of learning with the Next Gen car as we’ve had it across ’22 and ’23. And all of that learning has been focused into the targets that were set for the 2024 car that have been delivered to and really optimistic about the race car that we’ll have for 2024.”
The 2024 Mustang Dark Horse stands out with its sleek new nose design and character lines extending from the fender to the door.
NASCAR’s tight regulations allow manufacturers — Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota — limited leeway in designing their vehicles, but Rushbrook emphasized that even slight optimizations can have a significant impact.
“Where you are within that box is still important,” he explained. “So repositioning as you can to truly optimize that, every little bit of performance counts.
But there’s also a lot of performance that simply isn’t characterized in that submission process of how the cars are truly race on these variety of tracks, as well as trade-off decisions that are made in terms of drag versus downforce.
“It’s hard to make improvements in both — we certainly did in this case — but in our ’23 car, maybe some of our trade-offs weren’t in the optimal place that you could see.
We were really strong on superspeedways, and that hurt the performance a little bit on the intermediate tracks.
So being able to reposition where we are in the box is an important step for us, as well as optimizing some of the detailed racing conditions to make sure we’re the most competitive in all those situations.”
Blaney, a Ford driver since 2013, will contend for his first NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Rushbrook, reflecting on his long-standing association with Blaney, shared his appreciation for the driver’s development over the years.
“He was young and very early in his career,” Rushbrook recalled with a laugh. “And when I think back to that point in time, that Ryan Blaney, and what we’ve seen him develop into both as a race car driver sitting inside the car but also a person and a leader outside of the car, it’s been great to watch that.
And I even made a comment to him at the beginning of the season after one of our meetings, just how happy we were with where he is and that maturity level and a leader across, not just within Team Penske, but as we work with all of our drivers across all of our teams.
He’s become a leader in that process as well, which we really appreciate.
“He’s still young. But he’s got a great head on his shoulders and certainly knows how to wheel the car OK and look forward to seeing what he can do on Sunday.”