(QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Coming off of not only winning the Cup series for a second straight year but also sweeping winning the Xfinity Series and the Craftsman Truck series, the team at Ford knew the target on their back would be massive heading into the 2024 season.
So, what did they do? They decided to get better.
“They’re gunning for us and we know that and as soon as the checkered flag dropped in Phoenix, we went to work,” said Richard Johns, NASCAR Performance Lead at Ford Performance.
New for 2024 is the next generation of the iconic Ford Mustang, the Dark Horse. So far in Daytona, it’s looked really good.
Ford drivers Joey Logano in the No. 22 Team Penske and Michael McDowell in the No. 34 for Front Row Motorsports put up the two fastest times in qualifying, securing an all-Ford front row.
Johns says plans for the new Cup car began earlier last year, and as the season went on they continued to gather data to make sure the Mustang could continue to run in the front of the pack.
“The super speedways were great for us, you know, I think that we showed we almost filled out the top ten in all the superspeedway races, which is fantastic, but there’s a lot of intermediate tracks and we did struggle there,” Johns said.
The box that NASCAR gives to make changes to the cars is small, but Johns says they were still able to make improvements to get more downforce to help around the corners with the least amount of drag.
That’s attention to detail that can gain you a tenth of a second here, a tenth of a second there and that’s what puts you in victory lane.
Johns couldn’t give away a lot, but to put it simply the Dark Horse is more aggressive. Even the average though, can see the difference in the way it looks. The character line running down the door into the quarter panel is more pronounced and even the nose has a fiercer look.