Ford to Withdraw in 2016 – But Don’t Panic

I’ve said before that there’s not many well-kept secrets in motorsport these days, and another poorly kept one has finally come out – in a typically cack-handed way via a leaked email – that Ford are bowing out of the V8 Supercars Championship in 2016. They will support the teams running the Falcon FGX next year, but once that’s gone, they are outta here too. To do what, no-one quite knows. Spend more money advertising at tennis matches, apparently – because that sells more cars than a motor racing series where your premier cars are winning regularly and have indeed just come off the back of winning the Bathurst 1000 back-to-back.

In fact, let’s start with that – what is it with manufacturers totally mistreating motorsport lately? We had Dodge bail out of NASCAR just as they finally won a championship, and then ditto in TUDOR United Sportscar racing, to leave them involved in…erm…actually nothing now. That’s right. Dodge, a brand associated with PERFORMANCE and RACING, is now involved in nothing of the sort. Same with Ford, the brand that became iconic as the blue-collar marque which took on those illustrious European giants and won – most notably at Le Mans in the late 1960s – and has been interwoven into the fabric of Australian motorsport for the longest time. Indeed, when the V8 Supercars in its current form started in 1992, the series was built off of the longest-standing – and perhaps most passionate – sports rivalry in the world; Holden vs Ford. Whilst you may get passionate in support of your favourite sports team, that pales in comparison to the devotion Aussie racing fans have to either the Red Lion or Blue Oval.

Which makes this announcement triply confusing. The phrase ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ isn’t perhaps as relevant these days as before, where road cars would literally be taken from the showroom floor to the racetrack and back again, but it still rings true – and none more so than in touring car racing, where the cars at least still bare a common resemblance to everyday road cars. And with the Falcon model going away post-2015 altogether, you’d think Ford would want to stick around in the championship to help whatever its replacement will be – either the Mondeo or the Mustang – really take hold in Australia.

Sorry, we’re using logic again. That seemingly doesn’t work in car manufacturer boardrooms.

However, I have a sneaky feeling that this won’t be quite as bad as people are making out. And certainly, it won’t be the last we see of any Fords on the grid post 2015. Here’s why.

For the longest time in V8 Supercars, Ford actually weren’t a big manufacturer supporter – indeed, it took them until 1998 to have an official presence on the grid, when they become more heavily involved with Glenn Seton’s title-winning operation. Yup, it took a privateer single-car team winning in a Ford to really get Ford involved in this series. Ford Tickford Racing lasted through to 2002, where Ford switched its main focus over to 00 Motorsport (Craig Lowndes’ infamous green-eyed monster), before British performance company Prodrive purchased Seton’s team to transform it into the Ford Performance Racing we know today. But even with full manufacturer backing, results were fairly atrocious, and it took until 2006 before results begun to fall their way – during which time it was up to Stone Brothers Racing to lead the Ford charge against the Holden armies, with Messrs Ambrose and Ingall toppling the previously invincible Mark Skaife through 2003-05.

Then Triple 8 Racing burst on the scene in the mid-2000s and started rising swiftly to the top, beating all-comers – driving Fords. And yet, would Ford support them? Nope. In fact, they refused to even let them have Ford badges on their Falcons. No, seriously. So despite T8 winning several championships, they reluctantly switched to Holden in 2010, where they have been racking up wins and titles ever since as Ford fans stew.

But crucially, even when there was lukewarm Ford support at best in the 1990s, Fords were still on the grid – and winning races. The likes of Seton and John Bowe won titles and Bathurst 1000s in Falcons mostly independent of factory support. And this would seem to be the process again. Team Penske is linking up with Dick Johnson Racing next year with Ambrose (haven’t you heard?), and whilst Penske runs Chevrolet-powered cars in Indycar, his NASCAR operation is all-Ford, whilst Johnson has raced Fords his entire life no matter what support he’s had from the factory. So a switch to any other manufacturer seems out of the question, even though Penske you would assume must have had suspicions of this news for a while. And whilst it would seem Penske would be going into battle under-equipped against the Holden/Nissan/Volvo armies, an operation as strong and muscular as his will probably be just as strong as any factory effort anyway – similar in a way to West Surrey Racing romping to a British Touring Car Championship victory this year in an independent BMW, beating out the MG and Honda factory cars.

So whilst Ford’s decision to withdraw is right up there with Hendrick Motorsports deciding to quit NASCAR in order to invest in a competitive fly fishing programme, this is just the latest in a long line of quite frankly idiotic decisions from the manufacturer – and most importantly, they haven’t hurt the on-track successes yet. In fact at certain points, Ford success in V8SC has been in spite of, not because of, manufacturer support. And even when Ford do sod off in 2016 (presumably off the back of a 2015 title win, knowing how these things go), I still expect to see Fords on the grid and competing at the sharp end into 2016 and beyond. The new regulations appear tailor-made for cars like the Mustang, and indeed, Lexus have confirmed they are interested in running their RCF – a V8-engined two-door fastback – in the future. And with Nissan, Holden and Volvo all showing no signs of backing down yet, this shouldn’t spell doom and gloom for the championship just yet.

Removing V8s from the equation altogether, however, might.