Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
2015 Charlotte Media Tour
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The Charlotte Media Tour made a stop at the new Ford Performance Technical Center on Tuesday night to get a first-hand look at the facility which opened in May 2014. Below are comments from Ford officials who spoke about the building’s purpose and also about the recent formation of Ford Performance.
RAJ NAIR
Ford Group Vice President, Global Product Development, and Chief Technical Officer
As you may know, a lot of companies will say that they have racing and performance in their DNA.
Well, I am here to tell you, we don’t just have it in our DNA … we have it in our blood, in our spirit and certainly our legacy.
You see, 114 years ago this October, Henry Ford – who had already failed as an automobile manufacturer – built a race car called Sweepstakes with three of his friends and changed the history of the automotive business when he upset the greatest racer in America – Alexander Winton – in a race that helped him find the backers to start what we know as Ford Motor Company today.
I am certain that Edsel Ford – who is with us tonight – can go into great detail of that historic day, but the key thing to take away from it all is that Ford Motor Company is here today because our founder – Henry Ford himself – used racing as a way to prove out his ideas and his technology, and then promote the success of his racing efforts to help sell cars and trucks.
We’re pleased today to say we use racing – and performance – for the same reasons Henry Ford did way back in 1901.
In December, we announced the formation of a new organization within our company called Ford Performance. The director of Ford Performance, Dave Pericak, will tell you more details about that organization shortly, but know that it is part of our overall strategy at Ford to ramp up our investment in performance and racing to take advantage of a growing market worldwide for performance vehicles.
This building we are in tonight is part of that investment. When we planned and designed the Ford Performance Technical Center, we located it here to be close to NASCAR’s technical center and to our major NASCAR teams.
But our plan is to use this facility for more than just NASCAR development. We want to make the tools and resources available to our teams across many of the racing series we compete in.
And, most importantly, the full-motion simulator you will get a chance to see was installed with the thought that it will help us develop not just better race cars, but better Ford performance vehicles for our customers across the world.
The world got a chance to see first-hand what we meant a couple weeks back when we introduced three new vehicles at the Detroit auto show … the new F-150 Raptor, the Shelby GT350R … and of course, the star of the show … the new Ford GT.
The new Ford GT will be powered by our 3.5-liter, twin-turbo EcoBoost V6 engine… based on the engine we started to develop in IMSA Daytona Prototypes last season, and continue to develop this season… including a very important victory for us two days ago at the 24 Hours of Daytona.
These vehicles we showed in Detroit, along with the Shelby GT350 we showed last fall, and the Focus and Fiesta ST models we have on the road right now, are all part of our exciting lineup of performance vehicles that will only continue to grow.
I think that would be a strategy and a lineup Henry Ford would be very proud of.
Now, to get into details of the new Performance organization at Ford, let me introduce you to Dave Pericak, director of Ford Performance.
DAVE PERICAK
Director, Ford Performance
Good evening everyone. What an awesome experience at NAIAS to be able to reveal to the world the new exciting performance vehicles coming from our new global Ford Performance organization.
As announced back in December with the formation of the new global team, these vehicles are just a part of the 12 new performance vehicles that the team will deliver for global enthusiasts through 2020.
So why all the investment into performance? In addition to meeting enthusiasts desires, these vehicles will support delivering the company’s One Ford plan for profitable growth, product excellence and innovation in every part of its business.
Performance vehicle sales around the world continue to grow – with sales up 70 percent in the United States and 14 percent in Europe since 2009.
Performance vehicles play a vital role in the Ford portfolio by, 1, attracting new customers to the brand; 2, retaining existing customers within the brand; and 3, establishing long-term relationships with younger, wealthier customers and generating greater showroom traffic.
As Raj mentioned, performance is not just our DNA but it is our legacy and our investment in performance is to serve the much larger, far more important goal to drive innovation throughout our entire company.
Performance vehicles support a platform to showcase Ford’s technology, innovations, and allow piloted advanced technologies, supporting flow-through to mainstream products. Innovation is driving everything we do at Ford.
To support this goal, we created our new Ford Performance organization which unifies Ford SVT, Team RS and Ford Racing globally which will increase our engineering capabilities and successes by developing a connection between our production vehicles and racing.
Ford Performance is a halo under which we are leveraging technologies, innovations to deliver performance cars, utilities, and trucks that enthusiasts expect.
The organization will help us strengthen and grow our performance vehicle lineup worldwide, and allow us to more quickly introduced products, parts, accessories and experiences that meet the needs of customers around the world on-road and on the track. It is our ultimate product development test bed.
Ford Performance provides a platform to showcase Ford’s innovative capabilities and to pilot advanced technologies and processes in aerodynamics, light-weighting, electronics, powertrain performance and fuel efficiency that can be applied more broadly to Ford’s mainstream product portfolio.
In addition to using race tracks around the world, the team will develop new vehicles and technologies at Ford’s engineering centers globally such as here in Charlotte at our new technical center.
This state-of-the-art facility will help our race teams and engineering teams deliver racing innovations and advancing tools for use in performance and all of our production vehicles.
As you will hear from Mark Rushbrook and see during your visit, racing remains a vital innovation lab for Ford. Our F1-grade driving simulator in this facility will help speed both racing and consumer product development.
Let’s take a look at some of the innovations stemming from the performance vehicles we revealed at NAIAS.
Our EcoBoost engine technology is synonymous with innovation and a strong example of how we are migrating technology and engineering across our lineup, ensuring our vehicles are fun to drive, not just our Ford Performance lineup.
It’s one of the smartest technologies Ford has ever developed and a technology that powers our Ford Performance cars and nearly every new Ford vehicle.
For instance, as our team was just able to demonstrate this past weekend with a first-place win in the Rolex 24 at Daytona using our 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine powering a IMSA TUDOR Championship racing prototype sports car, as well as Ford cars, trucks and utility vehicles.
Both the Raptor and the GT will use unique, high-output versions of the new 3.5-liter EcoBoost.
GT350 and GT350R also utilize carbon-fiber composites, which helps reduce weight, better for efficiency. GT350R also features standard lightweight carbon fiver wheels, making Ford the first major automaker to introduce this innovative wheel technology.
Thanks to the truly innovative use of aluminum and high-strength steel as on the all-new F-150, the new Raptor will be over 500 pounds lighter than the previous version, which equals more efficiency and a huge difference in off-road handling and maneuverability.
Our all-new 10-speed automatic transmission will debut on the Raptor and will not only have a significant effect on fuel efficiency; it also dramatically improves performance with a much wider ratio spread.
How about our all-new Ford GT?
Beyond being the ultimate Ford, and a halo for the new Ford Performance group, the GT is the embodiment of innovation, particularly in terms of lightweight materials, aerodynamics, and EcoBoost performance.
GT makes extensive use of lightweight materials. It is built around a carbon fiber tub that serves as a two-person passenger cell. All the body panels on the GT are also carbon fiber. The extensive use of carbon fiber and aluminum will provide for greater efficiency, as well as a highly competitive power to weight ratio. The GT is a flagship for innovation, and that’s why we’re building an all-new supercar.
These innovations will directly impact all future Ford products, and that’s where our investment will have the greatest impact. Ultimately, the real pleasure will be watching the technologies we develop for our performance products proliferate into all Ford products, improving the value and efficiency of the entire lineup. That’s true Performance through innovation.
Thank you for your time. I would now like to introduce Mark Rushbrook, our Motorsport Engineering Manager.
MARK RUSHBROOK
Racing Engineering Manager, Ford Performance
“I’d like to talk about the people on the motorsports engineering team that are going to be using this facility, so with our commitment to performance, as Raj talked and Dave talked, part of that is racing and we’ve increased our commitment to the people working on racing. Our team last year was only seven people working in motorsports engineering and now it has been increased to 21 with most of those positions being staffed. That is allowing us to go technically much deeper in all the areas that are important for racing – engine design and development, aerodynamics, body engineering, vehicle simulation and analytics – to help our racing teams.
As part of our commitment to performance and because we are now part of the greater Ford product development, that gives us access to the technical experts and the facilities that we have in Dearborn and that’s something that we have been and will continue to leverage.
Another thing that we’re using racing for is it’s a development opportunity for our people, not just those working in performance and in racing, but for those mainstream engineers. We’ve started a program in June of last year called Motorsports Technology Exchange. We’ve had five people start on that program, so we go out in the mainstream and handpick some of our best and brightest engineers. They are assigned to work in motorsports in three years, so they bring to us some of their product development experience. They all have a passion for racing. They bring that into this very unique environment where they’re pressure-tested because that green flag is gonna fly at noon on Sunday whether you’re ready or not. It tests their technical craft. It tests their leadership and makes them better engineers. Their skill helps us win on the track and they can then take that back to product development and that will help our mainstream vehicles as we go forward in the future.
Another very important aspect of our commitment to performance is the sharing two ways from mainstream to performance in racing, but also from racing and performance back to the mainstream. Just some examples of that, engine design and development, we have a station that we’ll talk to you about that. Our CAE tools, the same tools that we use for our mainstream engines are used on the NASCAR Sprint Cup engine, which make it more powerful and make it reliable. That tests our CAE tools and makes them even better, so that when we use them on mainstream programs they do a better job for us there as well.
Engine calibration, we’ve been able to apply some of our mainstream tools to help with part throttle driveability calibration that helps with driveability of the cars when you’re in a part throttle situation. From our IMSA program we took some anti-lag strategies and we’re implementing that onto some of our production programs. Those are just a couple of examples.
The Ford GT that you saw has gone through the same aerodynamics development process that we use for our NASCAR Sprint Cup Fusion, using the same CFD tools, using the same scale wind tunnel facilities, so there’s more evidence of sharing those tools back and forth.
As far as vehicle dynamics and simulation, that’s one of the highlights of this technical center. By having this simulator here, we’ve been working on it for six months, starting to apply it to racing. We’re also going to be applying that to our mainstream vehicles and we can go through some of that during the tour.
This tech center is an opportunity to showcase some of our new tools and development processes for you, but to also fully leverage them for our racing teams and our production programs.”
Q&A SESSION WITH RAJ NAIR
THE FRONT OF THE FORD GT REMINDS ME OF YOUR ICONIC RACE CAR FROM 1966. IS THERE ANY PLANS TO BRING IT BACK TO GT RACING OR MAYBE LE MANS ONE DAY? “When we designed the vehicle we gave the design team three goals. First off, listen to the aero engineers, so we literally did design this vehicle with CFD and with the quarter-scale models. Second, have a tie-in back to the original GT 40 so that people at a glance would look at it and say, ‘That’s a Ford GT.’ And third, although we wanted people to think it was a Ford GT, we wanted a completely modern interpretation of it, that when people looked at that vehicle it was really a future supercar, not a retro-styled vehicle. I think the design team has done a fantastic job in delivering all three of those. It’s one of those cars for me that absolutely looks like a Ford GT and it looks incredibly functional, and it is, every line on that vehicle is functional, but it’s incredibly beautiful as well. It’s a very fast vehicle, at least the simulations say it will be. We’re going to have some great power out of that 3.5 EcoBoost and it’s going to be a great production vehicle. There’s been no discussion about racing yet, but if we were to do something like that it’s probably a pretty good platform.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL YOU GET THE MOST OUT OF THE MONEY YOU SPEND IN RACING? “You saw some of those metrics Dave showed you. First off, racing just for our racing fans. There’s an incredible amount of brand loyalty with our fans, whether it’s with NASCAR or any of the other series, so just the market activation with the fan base and how much NASCAR touches is a return on the investment right there. What’s key for those fans though is they’re often influentials, so they’re the guys in the neighborhood that when people are thinking about getting a new car, they’re the ones to go talk to and say, ‘Hey, what do you think about these cars?’ So making sure that those people understand Ford’s commitment to racing, understand our technology and prowess has an impact on those influentials. Also, it’s a significant showcase of our capability. Everyone pretty well knows right now that what’s underneath these vehicles is very different from what’s underneath the Ford Fusion, yet at the same time the engineering tools that we’re talking about are the same tools that we use for production. So as much as we can show an expertise in using those tools in competition, it carries through to the rest of the brand. So for those three aspects of it, not to even mention that it’s a training ground for our engineers, it’s a showcase and a proving ground for a lot of the technologies, particularly when we can get more production-type technologies into the vehicles, all of those, we think, is a very good return on our investment. For those of you that have a familiarity with working in a big corporation, we measure everything on return so there are plenty of finance people involved to make sure that this investment is worthwhile.”
HOW MUCH OF THE CAR DO YOU ACTUALLY WORK ON – ENGINES, BODIES, CHASSIS – TO IMPROVE FORD PERFORMANCE? “Clearly a lot of the partners we have here do a vast majority of the work, whether it’s our team partners or Roush Yates engineering. But also the team that you have here at Ford engineering and the tools that we have available as a large OEM, whether it be facilities like our wind tunnels, whether it be our dynos, whether it be advances that we have in computational fluid dynamics and computer-aided engineering, we try to bring those to bear particularly in the areas that the teams or Doug and his team have identified areas of opportunity and where they need some help. So there is a lot of back and forth. There are times that race engineering is ahead of production engineering and there are other times that production engineering is ahead of race engineering, so it’s really a lot about the engineering tools and what they bring to bear. Clearly, the vehicle is very specialized. We would never be able to run a production Fusion at the ride heights that you run in NASCAR, but the chassis dynamics simulation still apply, the physics are still the physics, so all of that from an engineering point of view is still really valuable to go through. Then obviously the market dynamics and the market activation and what it does to strengthen the brand. All of that plays into why we think racing is important. It’s interesting. There’s not many products in the world that you can think of that have an entire sport based around it. Other than products that are made for a sport, tennis rackets or whatever, this is a consumer product, an incredibly technically complex consumer product, an incredibly big business – billions of dollars are invested into programs – yet this will likely be the second-most expensive thing they probably buy next to their house, and a lot of times it’s based on an emotional decision. So for us to be an automotive manufacturer, where we design, engineer, manufacture and sell cars, to not be involved in car racing doesn’t make any sense. I get the questions on why, but sometimes I wonder why do we get those questions. Why wouldn’t we? It’s part of our DNA. It’s how the company was born and I can’t imagine a better place to show what we can do and show how proud we are of our cars and our performance and our teams and our drivers and how we do on the track.”
HOW DID YOU KEEP THE GT SO WELL HIDDEN AND WHAT WILL THE AVAILABILITY BE FOR THE CAR? “It’s going to be a global vehicle and with North America being our home market it certainly will be available in North America. It will not be available in a right-hand drive version, but, other than that, it’s a global offering. Availability, we’re not ready to talk specific dates, but we’re talking late next year. How we kept it a secret, you’re right it’s really hard to keep something like that a secret. First, you don’t tell any of the racing guys about it (laughter). You know how they leak. You guys twist their arm. We kept it to a really small team and that was part of it. We even didn’t have it in our main studios. We have a really old area. I don’t know if you know the Dearborn Product Development Center, but it’s a giant complex with a sub-basement level underneath all of it that’s connected by tunnels. We took an old area where we have some milling machines that do get used to mill clays and we created a dedicated studio that nobody knew about. You’ve seen these magnetic cards that we use to get in various areas of the building. We didn’t use those. We had old-fashioned keys and locks to try and make sure that only the people that needed to be in there were in there. We had a few key board members that were aware of the program, one of them happens to be here (Edsel Ford), so it was very tight and then we eventually took it to the Board for approval and even post that it was held very closely and very tight. Obviously, no matter what you do there are going to be rumors out, but I think the team did a pretty good job of making sure it was going to be a surprise at the show and fortunately it was.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT AND DID IT COST EXPONENTIALLY MORE THAN ANY OF YOUR OTHER PRODUCTION MODELS? “I think any head of product development at Ford constantly gets asked, ‘When are you going to do another Ford GT?’ So there’s an aspect of it we’re always thinking about – should we do one? I think a couple of things came together and probably the most significant one being in 2016 it will be the 50th anniversary of that historic win in 1966 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where the Ford GT 40 came in 1-2-3. In our annals and our heritage that is a really important event for us – maybe not as important as 1901 with Sweepstakes winning that founded the company, but pretty close and we really felt we wanted to do something to honor that. We had been thinking about that with 2016 as kind of a deadline of when we would like to have it out. If you want to think very specifically about that vehicle and the decisions of all carbon fiber, the decisions of 3.5 EcoBoost – that type of thing – it was probably about 13 months ago that we really started putting that program together.”
