Behind-the-scenes on Ford’s Mustang Nurburgring challenge

Ford has released a 13-minute online documentary about its attempt to take on Europe’s best sports cars with its race-bred Mustang GTD.

Titled ‘Road to the Ring’ the short film takes you behind-the-scenes as the team from Ford and its engineering partner, Multimatic, tackle the iconic Nurburgring in an attempt to set a lap time below the seven minute mark.

Spoiler alert, Ford factory driver Dirk Muller achieved a 6m57sec lap in his first three laps on the track, but it’s still worth a watch to see the preparation and effort that went into the ground-breaking achievement.

Mustang GTD chief program engineer Greg Goodall explained to Torquecafe the importance of setting a time at the German track, which is considered the international benchmark for performance and handling.

“So the whole point of GTD is to go compete with the European supercars and show everybody that Ford is serious about this and that we’re serious about performance vehicles and that we can make very, very capable cars,” Goodall said. “But you can’t just say those words, you have to do it in a way that’s measurable.

“So the Nurburgring was really the way to do that. It’s something that means a lot to enthusiasts, even to a novice race fan, they understand that the Nurburgring is something special and it’s right in their Europeans backyard, right? So the goal was to go and set a very respectable time and go toe-to-toe with these folks that have been doing this for years.”

Check out the full documentary below.