Ford Mustang Dark Horse to make make NASCAR Cup debut in 2024
Ford Performance will debut a new Mustang next season in the NASCAR Cup Series, the manufacturer announced Wednesday.
The 2024 car will be the Mustang Dark Horse, part of the family of mustangs built by Ford. The car will make its Cup debut in the Feb. 4 Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
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With the seventh-generation Mustang, the Mustang brand will be eligible to race on six continents in various racing series, beginning in 2024. In the coming months, Mustang Dark Horse racing variants will be eligible to compete in GT3 and GT4 classes globally and the Dark Horse R will compete in the Mustang Challenge Series and grassroots events.
Ford unveiled the Mustang Dark Horse last year, marking the first new performance nameplate for Mustang since 2001.
“To update our Cup car to that seventh generation Mustang was an important decision,” Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance Motorsports, told NBC Sports. “It was a no-brainer decision that we were going to do it, but the discussion was around ‘Is it a Mustang GT or is it a Mustang Dark Horse?’ and we decided to style it after the Mustang Dark Horse.
“ … That decision was taken probably close to two years ago and then the real work was done across probably a year and a half of the design studio working with the aerodynamics team to make sure it looked like a beautiful Mustang Dark Horse but also that it wold be competitive in NASCAR Cup to be able to win races and win championships.
“That’s a lot of hard work that gets done by a lot of people and we’ve got great designers in the studio that know how the Mustang needs to look, but they also understand that it needs to perform and that there need to be trade-offs made on that. But at the end of the day, we think we’ve got a car that looks fantastic, like a Mustang Dark Horse, but it’s also got great performance around the racetrack in terms of meeting the NASCAR requirements and meeting the team requirements.”
Ford drivers are looking forward to the body change on the Ford Next Gen car.
“I think of how Mustang has evolved over the years and how NASCAR has evolved along with it and they’re just two brands that go together,” Brad Keselowski said in a statement from Ford. “I’m proud to get to drive it and proud to be able to compete for the win in this car.”
Said Ryan Blaney in a statement from Ford: “I can’t wait for this to debut and drive it next year at the Coliseum and, hopefully, I can be the one to get the first win. That would be a cool accomplishment.”
Blaney is one of the drivers in the Championship 4 field and vying for a Cup title Sunday at Phoenix Raceway (pre-race coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock). He will race Kyle Larson, William Byron and Christopher Bell for the championship.
