Proton Competition has been announced as the first customer team for the Mustang GT3, with intent to campaign a pair of the new Ford racecars in the FIA World Endurance Championship, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans
“This is a very important program and an exciting moment for our organization,” said Proton Competition team principal Christian Ried. “The Mustang is a great brand and this is an important step for our team. We look forward to joining with Ford starting in 2024.”
Proton Competition currently runs programs in a variety of series, including WEC and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, spanning the GTE, GT3 and LMP2 categories. Proton will also introduce a fourth Porsche 963 into the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GTP category later this year. The Ehingen, Germany-based company will join Multimatic in racing the Mustang GT3. Multimatic was previously announced as Ford’s partner in GTD PRO in the WeatherTech Championship, where it will campaign two cars.
“We’re very excited about the partnership with Proton,” Mark Rushbrook, Global Director, Ford Performance Motorsports, told RACER. “What Proton represents as a team, how successful they have been, the way that they approach racing … they’re very focused, great people, great technical resources. So when we had the first opportunity to talk to them to be our first customer team, and for them to be able to apply for entering in the 2024 WEC season, it was a big opportunity for us and we really saw there were a lot of synergies with how they approach racing and and how we approach racing. We’re excited that they will be the first customer team and looking forward to seeing them on track.”
From the moment that Ford announced at Daytona in January 2021 that it would produce a GT3 car, inquiries began coming in from teams wishing to race the car in a variety of series, Rushbrook reported, and Ford Performance has been active in talking to them to find the right partners. While Ford Performance will prioritize getting cars to Multimatic and Proton, it is intent on building as many Mustang GT3s for which there is demand, and hopes to see customer teams competing with the car not only in IMSA and WEC, but SRO worldwide and any other series that feature GT3 cars.
“That’s what we like about this convergence, that it’s no longer GT and GT3 separate,” Rushbrook said. “We can compete as a factory as appropriate in IMSA GTD PRO, but we also can have customer teams competing in GTD — or even customer teams competing in GTD PRO if they choose — as well as SRO and WEC.
“We’re excited that we can design and homologate one car that can be sold around the world to compete in so many different series in a very meaningful way. Mustang is a global sports car, and we’re now finally able to go global racing as well. So it’s very important for us what we’re able to do with GT3 and customer teams.”
