The Ford GT has returned to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a dominating fashion. During qualifying in the LMGTE Pro class, the GT managed to take four of the top five spots, with a pesky Ferrari 488 GTE wedging itself into the third position. The return of the Ford GT marks nearly 50 years since the GT40 reigned supreme at Le Mans in the late 1960s.
“As we at Ford drive innovation into every part of our business, it’s worth remembering that our first innovation as a company was not in a laboratory, but on the racetrack,” said Mark Fields, Ford president and chief executive officer, referring to Henry Ford’s win of a 1901 car race that inspired financial backers to invest in his company. “We are passionate about innovation through performance and creating vehicles that make people’s hearts pound.”
To illustrate how competitive the qualifying was, Dirk Mueller, along with co-drivers Joey Hand and Sebastien Bourdais, had the fastest lap time of 3:51.185. The second place qualifiers, Ryan Briscoe and co-drivers Richard Westbrook and Scott Dixon, required 3:51.497. That’s a difference of just over three tenths of a second. The fifth place GT came in at 3:52 and change. Not a lot of room for error in that group.
Check out video below from when Ford dropped the bombshell that is the 2017 Ford GT.
