Hypercar announcement by Ford anticipated at Goodwood Festival of Speed

First off, if you want to experience one of the world’s top celebrations of motorsports heritage, you owe it to yourself to undertake a journey to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England. This year’s edition of the grand festival, located at the Goodwood Estate in Chichester, West Sussex, is about an hour from London and features a gathering of Land Speed Record cars when it gets underway next week. The world’s biggest auto manufacturers also turn out in droves for the festival, perhaps the largest and most prestigious auto-related happening in the United Kingdom. It’s kind of like Pebble Beach week in Monterey, California, in that regard. One of the participants is Ford, which disclosed that it’s planning to make a major announcement concerning its Ford GT program during the goings-on at Goodwood.

Ford did not enjoy a particularly memorable run recently at Le Mans with its GTs. Two GTs that were privately entered by Keating Racing, one of them the class winner in GTE-Am, were disqualified by the FIA following the 24-hour race for violations of fuel regulations. More recently, Ford announced its own plans for Goodwood, which will include a major announcement concerning the GT, appropriately to come on the Fourth of July. Ford’s new 760hp Shelby GT500 will make its U.K. debut alongside a racing Ford GT entered by Chip Ganassi Racing on the Goodwood hillclimb course. Other historic competition Fords being shown will include an M-Sport Ford World Rally Team’s Ford Fiesta WRC, the 2018 NASCAR championship-winning Team Penske Ford Fusion race car, the 1980 Ford Zakspeed Turbo Capri race car and gymkhana TEN star Ken Block’s Hoonitruck and Escort RS Cosworth. Following Le Mans, Ford could do well with some positive news for the GT program. As it stands now, the street version of the limited-production Ford GT gets its power from a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 that produces 647hp. That’s less than the Shelby-ized Mustang generates, in a car with a base price that now approaches $500,000. We don’t know what Ford plans to announce in England but we’d bet it’s going to be very big news from a horsepower standpoint.