Ford Performance has raced and won from Le Mans to Monaco, Daytona to Bathurst and Finke to Ensenada. But it has yet to take on one of the toughest races on the planet – the iconic Dakar Rally.
The first step in the multi-year plan to compete in the Dakar Rally is to finish and learn in collaboration with longtime partners M-Sport and Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) for vehicle development, servicing and event management.
Leading the charge into the 2024 Dakar Rally, taking place Jan 5-19 in Saudi Arabia, will be a purpose-built, high performance Ranger racing in the Rally Raid T1+ category.
The joint Ford Performance, M-Sport and NWM team has implemented a series of development phases through 2023 and continues testing with the Ranger T1+, based on the previous generation global Ranger, with a 3.5-litre EcoBoost engine.
Test races are expected to include Spain’s Baja España Aragón and Morocco’s Rally du Maroc rallies in July and October, respectively, before tackling the Dakar Rally next year.
“Our first time in Dakar will be a learning adventure that will help inform how we compete in the future,” said Mark Rushbrook, Global Director, Ford Performance Motorsports.
“But as with all racing, we’re not just racing to win, we’re also racing to help build better products for our customers.”
For the 2025 Dakar Rally, Ford Performance and M-Sport are developing an all-new, custom-built Ranger Raptor T1+ designed and built to Dakar’s T1+ class regulations.
M-Sport is well regarded as a leading developer and campaigner of the M-Sport Ford Puma HybridRally in the FIA World Rally Championship, as well as engine builders for the Mustang GT3 program.
NWM has played a key role since the infancy of the Rally-Raid Ranger, as the team developed and built units at its facility in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, specified to compete in full Dakar T1+ regulations in the South African Rally-Raid Championship (SARRC) and around the world.
