The Ford Mustang Dark Horse made its NASCAR debut in 2024 and didn’t disappoint as Joey Logano outdueled fellow Ford driver Ryan Blaney for the Cup Series title in a thrilling championship race at Phoenix Raceway that went down to the final lap.
That capped an inaugural season in which seven different drivers combined to win 12 races, including four straight at one point, and validated the months of development work from the Ford Racing engineering team.
“You’re always looking at competition reasons when you update these cars. Yes, it has to be relevant and the most recent for marketing reasons, but it’s also an opportunity based on everything that you’ve learned to redo the aerodynamics on the car, and that certainly is part of what we’ve done here,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Racing. “It’s not just a studio styling exercise. It was a very intense process with the studio part of it to make sure it truly looks like the Mustang Dark Horse with all the right character and features included, but also that we’re optimizing everything within the aerodynamics as well.”
Ford unveiled the all-new Mustang Dark Horse in the fall of 2022, marking the first new performance nameplate for Mustang since 2001. Based on the seventh-generation Mustang, it is the most track-capable 5.0-liter V8 street-legal Mustang ever and has inspired the current roster of Mustang cars that race in the Repco Supercars Championship in Australia and Formula Drift series.
Mustang Dark Horse racing variants also compete in GT3 and GT4 classes globally and in addition, Dark Horse R competes in the Mustang Challenge Series, Mustang Cup, and many grassroots racing events.
Mustang has been a fixture in NASCAR since coming to the Xfinity Series full-time in 2011 and immediately produced consecutive driver’s championships. Overall, Mustang has won a driver’s or owner’s championship in 10-of-15 seasons in that series and captured manufacturer’s titles in 2011 and 2013.
Since coming to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2019, Mustang has won a manufacturer’s championship and series-best 18 races in 2020, and then recorded three straight driver’s championships for the first time in Ford’s history with Joey Logano (2022 and 2024) and Ryan Blaney (2023).
Mustang has won nearly 200 races in the two series combined with 23 different drivers recording at least one. Overall, nine men have reached Victory Lane in both series, including Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher, Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, Cole Custer and Aric Almirola.
Additionally, Mustang has won several marquee events, including the Daytona 500 on multiple occasions as well as the Coca-Cola 600, Southern 500 and Brickyard 400. Inaugural races have also been good to Mustang, which won the inaugural Clash at the Coliseum and Bristol Dirt Race in 2021.
“We’re very happy with how the car looks,” said Rushbrook. “The box is so tight in terms of the rules, but there’s a lot of aerodynamic performance that is not captured by that box. It’s important to maximize all aspects and we feel like we’ve done that with this Ford Mustang Dark Horse.”
