Triple Eight will race Ford Mustangs in 2026.
Been a long time since Triple Eight have raced Fords. After they lost the deal last time by refusing to run blue cars in the vodafone days. Was a childish move putting the hogs on the grill in their last season instead of the blue oval. For some supporters that follow the brand above any team or driver that sucked. The early years when they were the Betta electrical team with Campbell Little, Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup were good years being a Ford fan. I still have the team shirt signed by Craig and Jamie and the Bathurst three peat shirt after their three in a row win at Australia’s greatest race track.
Seeing the team switch to Holden after that was a shame and a loss to Ford fans. For me if any team or driver do not run the blue oval then I do not support them.
Although there is one current exception to that self imposed rule. Scott Mclaughlin in the Indycar series. I don’t mind seeing him win a few as there are no fords in Indycar. If that changes though he will be another driver that I hope a Ford finishes before him. The fan brand rivalry is on another level in Australia as it has been traditionally hyped up between Holden and Ford. When Holden left many of those fans became Chevrolet supporters. Mostly due to Triple Eight. Walkinshaw Andretti United switched to Ford as they did not want to buy parts from Triple Eight and wanted to grow their own business in Supercars. It was great to see Chaz back in a Ford again. Supercars purchased the rights to run the Camaro and Triple Eight were the Homologation team with KRE doing the engines. For two years the Chevrolet has enjoyed the advantage of a bigger capacity LS engine and also restrictions put on the Ford Coyote. With the future of GM Chevrolet involvement unknown in Supercars Triple Eight approached Ford and made a deal to run Mustangs in 2026 and become the Ford homologation team. They also want to have KRE take over the engine program to supply all Ford teams. Details of the engine program are still unknown and also what will happen to Triple Eights customer teams who currently run the Camaro and purchase chassis and data packages from them. Some fans are already speculating if Chevrolet will even be part of Supercars in 2026 leaving only Ford and Toyota to fight it out. I think that Supercars has already spent so much on the Camaro that they will just keep running it in 2026. Maybe the involvement of Triple Eight running Fords will lesson the advantage that the GM teams have enjoyed. They won’t be blocking parity improvements to the Mustang at least. Any changes to the engine program will be interesting, hopefully the engines capacity is set to be 5.4 and overhead cam. That would force GM engines to be on par with the Coyote and the new Toyota being developed for 2026. Can we finally have a new tech series instead of one brand running old style bigger capacity engines?