KohR Motorsports Adds Mustang GT4 to CTSC Grid
A second Ford Mustang GT4 has materialized for the BMW Endurance Challenge at Daytona, the season-opening round of the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season.
Entered by KohR Motorsports, the driving lineup of owner/driver Dean Martin and Jack Roush Jr. is set for a full season in the series except for the Daytona round, which will see Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car competitor Cameron Maugeri filling in alongside Martin.
The addition boosts the Continental Tire Challenge grid to 41 cars across GS and ST and marks the first customer Mustang GT4 worldwide.
The KohR entry joins the No. 15 Multimatic Motorsports Ford as the two new-for-2017 Mustangs on the entry list for the newly-expanded four-hour race at Daytona.
While this chassis is new to the team, they took delivery just over one week ago, both Martin and Maugeri were entered in the Multimatic-run car at the Roar Before the 24 pre-season test along with its regular lineup of Scott Maxwell and Jade Buford.
Martin said he and the team have been impressed by the SRO GT4-spec Mustang in the short amount of time they’ve had with it.
“We’re super excited with the new car,” Martin told Sportscar365. “It’s just a beautiful car. Multimatic did a great job putting it together.
“We spent Tuesday in Mooresville, N.C. at Roush-Yates on the dyno, just breaking the car in, making sure there are no leaks, making sure it’s track ready. It went flawlessly.”
“A lot of the Mustangs in the past has been taking off the shelf parts and adapting them to the Mustang.
“The World Challenge car is a really good example of that. It was a great car, but this new car, with what Ford has done, with what the engineers have done, is fantastic.”
Martin said the level of support he and his team have received from both Ford and Multimatic has been very impressive.
“It’s a privateer effort,” said Martin. “That said, we’ve got lots of support from [Ford and Multimatic]. Especially with it being a new car, we rely very heavily on Multimatic because they’ve done the bulk of the development on it.
“All the guys at Multimatic have been extremely cooperative, extremely forthcoming with information. Any time you have a question, they’re right there.
“The Ford guys, they actually have their tech trailer here that supports all of their GTLM stuff. They said they have an open door for us if we need any help from them.
“So it’s privateer, but it’s as close as we’ve ever been to a factory program. It’s an extremely well supported customer program.”
Martin said the team is planning a dual Continental Tire Challenge and World Challenge campaign in 2017 with the PWC driver lineup still to be determined.
He also indicated additional KohR-run Mustangs are expected on the Continental Tire Challenge grid as soon as the second round of the season at Sebring.
“There will be a second IMSA car for Sebring, and there is the potential for a third one to be ready then too,” he said. “We’ve got two other drivers that we’re planning on bringing in to the second car.
“We’re playing the waiting game. We’re wanting to make sure that we’ve got cars, funding, everything in place before we pull the trigger for these new cars.
“When we leave here, we should be back at Multimatic next week building car number two. As soon as that’s done, I believe chassis number three is already at Multimatic to be built.
“As long as somebody else doesn’t come in that has their program set and their funding ready, that car is for us. But at the moment we do have priority with them.”
Watch KohR Motorsports prepare for the 2018 IMSA season