TO FINISH FIRST, YOU MUST FIRST FINISH!
ROUND 2 | 24 HOURS OF LE MANS

MOORESVILLE, NC, June 13, 2017 – The legendary Ford GT will return to the Circuit des 24 Heures in Le Mans, France this week to defend its 2016 GTE Pro Class victory, which was won by the No. 68 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing team of Joey Hand, Dirk Müller and Sébastien Bourdais who due to an injury, will be replaced this year by INDYCAR champion Tony Kanaan.

“There is a great amount of satisfaction that comes with an achievement like winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A special bond is present among the vast team that helped make it happen. You can look at each other and say on this day we were the best in the world. It’s especially nice when you know you are competing against a field of the world’s best,” noted Derrick Peacock, Technical Development Lead for Roush Yates Engines.

Can the famed Ford GT do what its ancestor did in 1966 & 1967 and win this world renowned race in consecutive years? If the Ford racing pedigree has anything to say about it, the answer will be, Yes!

The 2017 Le Mans race marks the 50th anniversary of Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt winning the race in 1967, driving the Ford GT40. This was the second in a streak of four consecutive wins for the Ford GT in 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969.

“This year it will be even tougher in some respects,” noted Adam McMaster, Calibration Engineer for Roush Yates Engines. “We have to be better than last year, that in itself is very difficult. We have to run 100 percent flawless to repeat our win from last year, but we are up for the challenge. To be here representing Roush Yates Engines is huge! We are trained to be a world-class engine supplier, here we are competing and winning against the best in the world.”

In order to win a 24 hour endurance race every team has to step up their game and to say “the devil is in the details,” is not a far cry from the truth when it comes to the Ford GT. The Ford GT is equipped with miles of wiring and numerous monitoring sensors. The elite calibration team at Roush Yates Engines take a leadership role in reviewing and analyzing the millions of lines of data being generated by the Ford EcoBoost V6 race engine.

For many of us race fans a screen streaming telemetry data can look much like an EKG monitor. To the Roush Yates Engines’ calibration engineers, it is their direct link to the twin-turbo Ford EcoBoost V6 race engine, providing valuable information back to the team.

With more than 100 years of experience the talented team of Craig Ashmore, Adam McMaster, Phillip Vars, Charles Vogel, and Wade Riesterer, alongside the Ford Performance team will constantly monitor the vital signs of the Ford EcoBoost race engines, as they run over 11,500 miles during the 24-hour endurance race.

This sophisticated technology will track every revolution of the engine and monitor it through the constantly changing atmosphere, track conditions and driver inputs throughout the race. This group of engineers will analyze, interpret and convey valuable insights to the race engineers, in order to refine engine boost and traction control parameters in parallel with driver feedback.

All this is done to ensure the engine and car are operating at peak performance over the constantly changing conditions of the 24-hour race. This is a very detail and tedious responsibility, but a very necessary one for managing track strategy in a 24-hour race, like Le Mans.

They refer to it as the ‘World’s toughest endurance race’ for a reason. As the old adage goes, “To finish first, you must first finish!” And that is what we intend to do as ONE FORD.