Marcos Ambrose returns to racing in a Mustang at Bathurst

[GT 550]

“We are working with Herrods, who did the transmission and the engine, to come up with a really good solution to make the transmission live, and to keep the temperatures under control.”

Wonder what this actually means. Just coolers? Not sure what the regs say in terms of opening engines and transmissions.

however with Harrod's involvement in the development

Um Herrod? Harrop? Herrop? Harald?

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[Stevefreestyle]

Wonder what this actually means. Just coolers? Not sure what the regs say in terms of opening engines and transmissions.
Um Herrod? Harrop? Herrop? Harald?

As all hardware and every engine & gearbox component (excluding Oil Coolers) must be standard OEM, I can only assume the Herrod involvement in "Doing" the Engine & Gearbox would be confined to possibly Blueprinting & balancing (although that is unlikely as the standard engine is very well balanced, with a 7500 RPM redline), but mainly electronic fine tuning to extract more performance. He also Tunes the Auto G/Box for shift points etc.

Hiccup? OOOPS bit of a typo there, should be John Herrod / Herrod Performance, who are the official Australian Rep of Ford Performance, and the new engine builder for DJR & BRT / Cooldrive.

In short he knows his stuff where Performance Ford V8s are concerned! Herrod Performance - The Mustang Specialists In Australia

 

[Stevefreestyle]

In Auto Action tonight all but one of the Mustangs are listed as Mach 1. The Miedecke car that Ambrose is co-driving has been tested and is much faster than the GT they used last year. The interesting thing is that it appears it’s running the 10 speed auto!

They are doing more testing with it to see if they can make the auto live the distance before making a decision on it, it seems.

On paper the auto is quicker, but it is optimistic to think it will last 6 hours of abuse, but here’s hoping!

Chris, the reasoning for the 10 Speed Auto appears to be the obvious - greater useable spread of gear ratios to fully exploit the power advantage.

Forget Paddles: Ford’s next Bathurst winner could be an Automatic – The Race Torque

".......“One of the limitations of the FN Mustang is that the gearbox is a bit different than the FM, the previous generation car. The FN has a lot more horsepower, but you can’t use it,” Miedecke told the On the Grid Podcast last week.

(with the 6 sp Manual) “We’ve found that at Eastern Creek, you drive it in third and fourth only. Second is very short, third a bit longer than you’d like, and fourth gear is super long.

“Even at Bathurst we were only using 3rd, 4th and 5th, and only using 5th on Conrod Straight.

“Whatever horsepower advantage we had was negated by the fact that it was being soaked up by that drivetrain and by the gearing. The car was really hard to get out of the cutting and we were losing a lot of time.”

The lap times suggest George isn’t wrong: Miedecke’s sublime 2m28.0292s best in qualifying, comfortably the quickest a Mustang Production Car has ever gone at Mount Panorama, was a full 2.5 seconds slower than Shane van Gisbergen’s flying 2m25.4399s pole position lap.

Canny strategy and a lot of Safety Car laps kept the ‘Stang on the lead lap, but over the distance it couldn’t stand up to the raw pace of the BMWs.

Explained Miedecke: “We had a look at the ratios and we found that if we went to the (closer ratio manual) Mach 1 gearing we might save about 1.8 seconds, which is a lot at Bathurst.

“But then we looked at the 10-speed auto and the advantage is even greater. Hopefully it’s going to be a bit of a performance thing for us.”

With the existing car sold – to well known Production Car racer Chris Delfsma – the decision was taken to build a new car, with GRM engaged during the peak Covid-19 lockdowns in 2021 when they had workshop time top spare.

Miedecke understates things when he says ‘a bit of a performance thing’. A 1.8 second or more gain in a car driven by he and a bloke called Ambrose automatically shifts – pardon the pun – the potential of the Mustang from ‘miles away’ to ‘almost there’ in terms of lap speed potential.

Early testing has gone well, if not perfectly, but such is life when trialing something brand new in motorsport – not something that often happens in this era of spec racing and samey-samey gear for all.

“Ultimately, it’s a bit of a jump into the unknown, I don’t know that anyone has raced a 10R80 transmission before, but it’s in the F150 raptor and it’s handled much more horsepower than we’re asking it to, and initial results are pretty promising.

“We have to work on some oil surge issues and I think once we get them sorted we should be good.”

.................And best of all, it’s a nod to the olden days where the road going product has real relevance to what wins on Sunday.

Forget Paddles: Ford’s next Bathurst winner could be an Automatic – The Race Torque
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[Friend of Dorothy]

Interesting article Steve, thanks. It seems the diff ratio Ford Australia chose for the local Mach 1 is not ideal for racing either.

I noticed the door trims replaced by carbon fibre. Also no rear spoiler fitted yet. Did the Australian Mach 1 only get the tiny spoiler, or is the bigger ‘wing‘ available?

It’s disappointing that they still don’t expect to be on the pace of the BMWs, even with this sole(?) automatic entry. The prospects of the manual cars seems to be even more modest.

Oh well, at least Shane van Gisbergen has been ruled out of the event, so that is a few tenths of a second the Mustang competitors don’t have to find!


EDIT: Well we are down a Mustang already:

Ambrose, Miedecke forced out of Bathurst 6 Hour

https://www.speedcafe.com/2022/04/14/ambrose-miedecke-forced-out-of-bathurst-6-hour/

 

[POJ 1]

just waiting for the authorities to ban all the Mustangs under the parity rules

 

[GT 550]

Electrical gremlins? Wierd. Throw in another ecu.

 

[Friend of Dorothy]

There is an interview with Marcos Ambrose on Stan Sport. He went through some of the changes that can be made and original equipment replaced to these so called production cars; I was astounded!

He did mention that they thought the safe bet was to stay with the standard wiring loom even though they had an option to make their own. Maybe they realised too late that they actually need to build their own wiring loom, but I’m only guessing.

Considering the car was built during 2021, they did appear to leave testing a bit late in the day, especially considering the dive into the great unknown by using the auto transmission for the very first time.

Anyway, I guess they are learning. I hope they persist with the auto as it is the only (faint) hope against the BMWs next year.

 

[Friend of Dorothy]

It was good to see the black Mustang was running the auto transmission and made it to the end of the race; albeit after a small accident.

For those that weren’t able to watch the race live on Stan, highlights are being shown on three occasions on free-to-air from tonight:

https://www.speedcafe.com/2022/04/21/how-to-rewatch-the-bathurst-6-hour-on-free-to-air/

 

[GT 550]

It was good to see the black Mustang was running the auto transmission and made it to the end of the race

A slushbox. Who'd have thought?!

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