The Blue Oval will continue its long association with the Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars with the S650 Mustang, that model set to underpin the brand's Gen3 programme.
The Gen3 prototype is set to be publicly unveiled with the seventh-generation bodywork at the Bathurst 1000 next month.
The latest Mustang programme includes a level of factory support for five Supercars teams – lead homologation squad Dick Johnson Racing, Tickford Racing, Blanchard Racing Team, Grove Racing, and defecting GM squad Walkinshaw Andretti United.
There is also scope for a customer GT programme in Australia in the future once the GT3 and GT4 spec Mustangs hit the market.
To help manage the current local motorsport programme, and any future expansion into customer racing, Ford Performance has established a small, dedicated motorsport presence in Australia.
Three people will be involved in the motorsport division – Justin Capicchiano, Ford Performance, SVE and Motorsport Manager, Brendan McGinniskin, Motorsport Engineer – Ford Performance and former DJR PR man Ben Nightingale, who will add motorsport to his Product Communications Manager role.
According to Ford Performance boss Mark Rushbrook, a local presence dedicated to motorsport had become a must after several years of support from the US.
“We do run our motorsports programme globally trying to share people, resources, learning across all the different racing series," he said.
"When we re-entered, in terms of technical engineering support with Australian Supercars with the current Mustang we did all that work [in the US].
"It’s obviously a big work load or time for us to be traveling from North America to support the series. I love being there, my team has loved being there, it’s just hard to support.
"As we were doing this work for the Gen3 car for the new Mustang, part of what we approved was getting some local support. Again, because of the importance of the series to us, the importance of the market and we were able to get approval for some head count there.
"Brendan McGinniskin I actually first met was 2018 at Shanghai when we were racing the Ford GTs and it was very clear his passion for motorsports and experience in motorsports and planted a seed then that if we ever needed anybody in the region that he should be somebody we consider.
"This was the right opportunity so we were able to get approval for Brendan to be a hundred per cent dedicated to our motorsports activities and with more support there as well.
"Justin Capicchiano is the Supercar manager there that has access to other resources and can help manage Brendan locally and when extra support is needed can be brought in.
"It’s a great set up for us to be able to leverage better what we do more globally and in the Australian market and a lot more efficient way of supporting all of the Supercars races not just a handful through the year.
"We’re really excited about that opportunity and certainly we would be able to use Brendan and Justin as we’re racing Mustangs GT4s or selling and supporting Mustang GT4s and Mustang GT3s in the market and we hope to sell a lot of them there.
"We also work with outside partners to put the proper support in place in terms of having parts and technical support, because it’s important to have it there local in each market to properly support customer racing.”
