Ford has amassed 176 Formula 1, 676 NASCAR, 92 World Rally and 330 V8 Supercar victories, as well as countless other victories and podium finishes in motorsports at grassroots, national and international levels.
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Gareth Woolridge and Boyd Dreyer teamed up with 2014 Dakar Rally winner Nani Roma and co-driver Alex Haro to conclude the inaugural 2024 Dakar Rally campaign in Saudi Arabia in the NWM M-Sport T1+ Ranger, while Ford Performance has officially launched its global motorsport expanded with local Neil Woolridge Motorsports (NWM) outfit and M-Sport by taking part in one of the legendary and toughest off-road competitions in the world.
The existence of Ford Motor Company can be attributed to motorsports, as its success in auto racing led to the creation of the Ford Motor Company. Founder Henry Ford once said that “auto racing began five minutes after the second car was built.” He competed in an auto racing event in 1901 and scored a notable victory over Alexander Winton, then considered America’s greatest racer.
In contrast, local motor racing in South Africa developed slowly until the early 1930s, but when the country’s first race circuit opened in Kimberley, Ford was there, with Durban’s Sylvester MacKenzie competing against fourteen others in his Ford V8 Special and in 1934 MacKenzie and JH Case took part in the country’s first international Grand Prix race in East London in their home-built V8 Specials.
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After the Second World War, motorsport at the highest level returned to South Africa just ten years later. However, Ford continued its winning ways abroad, with Red Byron winning the first-ever NASCAR race at Daytona Beach and Road Course in 1948 in a flathead Ford.
Saloon car racing did not take off until the late 1950s when the 1958 Grand Central 9-hour initiated national series such as Group 2, Onyx Saloons and Group 5, Modified Saloons, the Manufacturer’s Challenge, Group 1 and Group A, Group N , V8 sedans, production cars, GTC and an assortment of regional championships that followed in the decades that followed.
It was the Mk1 Lotus Cortina with its Cosworth-developed Twin Cam engine and drivers such as Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart abroad, and Kosie Swanepoel and Basil van Rooyen locally that established Ford’s motorsport credentials. The 1960s were a heyday for Ford in racing and a golden era for South African motorsport. Locally, tuners refined the Kent engine in the Anglia to provide homegrown specials such as the GSM Dart with race-winning performance, and Kent engines also powered Formula Ford single-seaters for decades after the series was founded in 1967.
South Africa provided an interesting prelude to the GT40’s Le Mans success. In November 1965, seven months before the clean sweep at Le Mans, a Ford GT (as the still-in-development GT40 was then called), driven by Peter Sutcliffe and Innes Ireland, almost won the Kyalami Nine-Hour race, then center of the race. the South African Springbok Trophy Series.
Locally, Ford was the boss in sedan car racing with the Ford Cortinas developed by Meissner and Superformance, driven by Koos Swanepoel and Basil van Rooyen. Swanepoel won the first South African sports car championship in 1964, ahead of Van Rooyen and Bob Olthoff in a Ford Galaxie.
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The Olthoff Galaxie won the SA Saloon Car Series in 1965, and in 1966 Swanepoel and Van Rooyen received Ford Mustangs (although the Mustang was not officially available here). The Mustangs gave way to Escorts and in 1969 Peter Gough in the Cosworth FVA powered Meissner prepared Escort won the Sports Car championship. However, the iconic Escort is best remembered for its rally achievements in the late 1960s and into the 1990s, in the hands of legendary drivers such as Björn Waldegård, Ari Vatanen, Roger Clark, Carlos Sainz, Didier Auriol and Marcus Grönholm.
The iconic DFV, developed with money from Ford, dominated Formula 1 for years and took local racing heroes such as John Love and Dave Charlton to multiple South African F1 championship victories in the 1970s.
Although the DFV achieved its last F1 victory forty years ago (at the 1983 Detroit Grand Prix), it is still considered the most successful engine in the history of Formula 1 and Grand Prix racing, with champions such as Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi. and James Hunt to victory. Although originally designed for Formula 1, it has been adapted to be used in a range of categories, including winning at Le Mans.
Changes in the rules for local sedan championships in the 1970s led to the creation of some memorable homegrown heroes, perhaps the most famous being the Ford Capri Perana V8 developed by Basil Green, a Johannesburg businessman and member of the SA Hall of Fame. Made even more memorable by its striking Gunston orange livery, with its lightweight Mustang engine, the Perana swept all before it in 1970. Piloted by Olthoff in the Group 5 category, it won 13 of 14 races and broke the lap record for sedan cars in the whole of South Africa. African race tracks.
With the arrival of the Mk5 Cortina in 1979, Ford South Africa fitted it with the locally produced 3.0-litre Essex V6 and a unique rear suspension and named it the XR6. XR6 interceptor. Only 250, all red, were built and on the track the XR6 excelled in the hands of Sarel van der Merwe, Geoff Mortimer and Serge Damseaux. This success, as well as the impending launch of the Sierra, led to the introduction of the limited edition Cortina XR6 TF (the TF stands for Team Ford), of which only 500 were manufactured. Like the Capri Perana, the Sierra About 250 road-going versions of the XR8, the fastest production Sierra in the world, were also built.
The XR8 was launched by John Gibb and Serge Damseaux in the 1985 Group 1 Championship and later Willie Hepburn raced a wilder derivative called “The Animal” in the Modified Saloons series.
In the early 1990s, Ford secured sponsorship from local oil company Sasol, and for almost a decade the Sasol-Ford team competed in virtually every form of local tin-top racing. Ford stalwart Sarel van der Merwe campaigned a Rousch-built Ford Mustang with a 450 kW 6.0-litre V8 in the WesBank Modifieds and won the series in 1994. In rallying, Van der Merwe won (having now driven eleven won the SA Rally Championship) again came close to the championship title in 1992 and 1993, driving a four-wheel drive Ford Laser. With young rally superstar Enzo Kuun as his teammate, the Laser won its fair share of rallies, and Sarel finished second in both seasons. Often regarded as the pinnacle of South African circuit racing, the AA Fleetcare Series and Touring Car Championship attracted international drivers and bespoke, highly advanced machinery in the early 1990s to deliver some of the best racing ever seen on local circuits seen.
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In 2000 and 2001, after the heady touring car period, Supervan again campaigned the Mustang in the WesBank series, now alongside the popular Gugu Zulu. Van der Merwe once again showed that he had lost none of his talent by winning the series in both years.
Locally, Ford switched from circuit racing to rally and off-road racing in the mid-2000s, and in 2011 Zimbabwe’s Conrad Rautenbach and his local co-driver Robin Houghton caused a stir in the rally fraternity by dominating the National Rally Championship in their M Sport developed Ford Fiesta S2000.
This dominance continued, with Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton winning the 2012 and 2013 National Rally Championship titles in their Fiesta S2000 (again sponsored by Sasol), and in 2012 bequeathing Ford their first rally manufacturer title in 36 years. In 2015, in the S2000’s penultimate year as the top class in local rallying, Cronje and the Fiesta S2000 added another National Rally Championship title to Ford’s trophy room.
Ford South Africa has a long relationship with Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) spanning more than 25 years. Neil Woolridge and Kenny Skjoldhammer won the 2006 SA Off-Road Championship in a Ford Ranger.
In the renamed South African Cross Country Series (SACCS), the V8-powered Ford Ranger, designed and developed by NWM and supported by Ford SA, led the way for many years, winning on its debut in 2013 with Lance Woolridge behind the wheel, alongside co-driver Ward Huxtable.
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Neil Woolridge Motorsport, with the support of Ford SA and its dealer network, took part in the 2014 Dakar Rally in South America. The team scored several top 10 stages in the toughest and longest rally event in the world against the world’s best teams and top manufacturers.
Numerous race victories for the Ranger followed in the following years, culminating in Woolridge and Huxtable scoring back-to-back Class T Production Vehicle titles in 2018 and 2019. In 2021, the team debuted its all-new EcoBoost 3.5-liter V6-powered T1 Ranger and won again on debut with Lance Woolridge and co-driver Elvéne Vonk. The Neil Woolridge Motorsport EcoBoost Ranger was completely re-developed for the new 2022 FIA T1+ regulations, with young stars Gareth Woolridge and Boyd Dreyer taking their first overall win at the final race of the South African Rally-Raid Championship season (SARRC).
Gareth and Boyd went on to win the 2023 SARRC series in their Castrol T1+ Ford Ranger, earning their first overall production vehicle championship title, along with the Premier Class FIA T1+ title.
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