Developed by Ford Racing and Multimatic, the GTD Competition sits at the top of the Mustang range. Drawing directly from the brand’s GT3 racing programme, it channels competition- derived engineering into a road-legal package. Ford President and CEO Jim Farley described the project as transferring motorsport development into a road car, with the Competition variant building further on that direction.
Ford Racing and Multimatic factory driver Dirk Müller completed the lap, placing the car sixth on the Nürburgring Pre-Production and Prototype leaderboard. Around a 20-kilometre circuit with more than 150 corners, performance gains are built gradually and shaped by small refinements that combine to make a big difference.
For the GTD Competition, those refinements include increased output from the supercharged 5.2-litre V8, aerodynamic revisions aimed at improving stability and downforce, new high- performance tyres and weight-saving measures achieved using magnesium and carbon-fibre components. Collectively, they have reduced lap time by more than 11 seconds compared to the car’s previous benchmark.
Dirk Müller’s 6:40.835 may have grabbed the headlines, but it was not the only notable time recorded during development. Ford Racing engineer Steve Thompson later lapped the Nürburgring in 6:49.337, quicker than Müller’s previous production benchmark. The result adds another layer to the GTD Competition’s story, pointing to a car capable of delivering exceptional performance with consistency.
The Nürburgring remains one of the automotive world’s toughest benchmarks, with manufacturers using the circuit to measure performance against some of the industry’s fastest road cars. Ford’s latest result moves the GTD Competition further up that order and brings the Mustang into increasingly rare company.
