Was Motorsport-Total.com already reported on Wednesday, is now becoming reality: Ford is returning to the DTM as the new manufacturer after 30 years! The previous Mercedes-AMG team HRT (main racing team) will use the new Ford Mustang GT3 from the 2025 season – with factory support. The deal was made according to information from Motorsport-Total.com just finalized this week. There is talk of a “long-term collaboration”.
“The fact that Ford has chosen HRT as its spearhead in Europe is a great honor,” says HRT Managing Director Ulrich Fritz about the new partner. “Ford is a real power brand with a great motorsport tradition and high motivation. The Ford Mustang GT3 is a racing vehicle of the latest generation that we can certainly take even further forward together.”
“HRT Ford Performance”, as the team is now officially called, will be fielding two Ford cars in the coming DTM season – we are talking about “factory entries”. It has not yet been decided who will drive the cars. The DTM is only part of the extensive program.
Exclusive contracts in the DTM and on the Nordschleife
Racing driver Hubert Haupt’s HRT team based at the Nürburgring, which with Maximilian Götz was the last racing team to date to win a Mercedes-AMG drivers’ title in the DTM in 2021, will also use the front-engine car developed by Multimatic and delivered for the first time in 2024 at the Nürburgring. Nordschleife and the 24-hour classic in the Eifel. The factory-supported operations form the second focus of the collaboration.
As part of the announcement, the team presented a vehicle design for the DTM, which – as we hear from the team – should be very close to the final version. This is the vehicle in the blue and yellow color scheme of the new lubricant partner Ravenol.
According to information from, both on the Nordschleife and in the DTM Motorsport-Total.com It is an exclusive contract, meaning no other team is allowed to use the Mustang GT3.
Thanks to HRT, Mustang competes in all long-distance classics
HRT has announced that it also wants to compete in the sprint and long-distance series of the GT World Challenge Europe, in which the Proton team will use the Ford in 2024, after the project with the Dinamic team fell through. In addition, HRT is also planning classic customer racing events in 2025, for example at the ADAC GT Masters, with which they want to remain true to the promotion of talent.
The deal with HRT means “that the Ford Mustang GT3 will be at the start together with our partners from Multimatic and Proton Competition at the most important 24-hour races such as Le Mans, Daytona and Spa,” says Ford’s motorsport boss Mark Rushbrook, not without pride . The Ford is used by Proton in the WEC and in Le Mans, and in the USA by developer Multimatic itself.
“With this collaboration, we are not only further expanding the Mustang racing program for 2025, but also strengthening our global position in GT3 racing and opening up new series and target groups around the globe.”
HRT becomes the new Ford development team
The partnership will also include technical collaboration, positioning HRT as Ford’s new development team. The Ford Mustang GT3, which will be presented in 2023 and is not yet fully developed, will “achieve an even higher level of racetrack-specific maturity thanks to HRT’s expertise,” says the press release.
The racing vehicle with its 5.4-liter V8 engine is based on the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse and is therefore the top GT3 version of the legendary Mustang series. The Mustang and the DTM – by the way, this is not a completely new chapter: Gerd Ruch already thrilled fans of the old DTM with the 5-liter sound of the Ford Mustang from 1991 to 1994, but without achieving any sporting successes with the privately used vehicle.
Ford achieved this between 1984 and 1989, when drivers such as Bernd Schneider, Klaus Ludwig and Manuel Reuter took part in the factory races. In 1988, Ludwig even won the US brand’s only driver’s title to date.
