Ford Hopes Its Le Mans Hypercar 'Won't Look Like an Oreca'

Ford Hopes Le Mans Car 'Won't Look Like An Oreca' Ford In around 12 months, Ford's first top-tier, factory-built prototype since the late 1960s will make its racing debut. The entire next year at Ford Racing is about making that happen, the most important steps in the process of developing a car that the Blue Oval's performance division hopes can mirror Ferrari's 499 P in breaking a half-century drought by winning at the 24 Hours of Le Mans upon debut. Program lead Dan Sayers is the person tasked with such a lofty goal.

He leads a group building a still-unnamed prototype, one we know will pair an Oreca LMDh chassis with a 5. 4-liter engine distantly related to Ford's road-going Coyote small blocks . Full details of the car are still months away, but we do know that its V-8 is going to roar.

The common chassis has raised some concerns in sports car circles, though. It's not the fact that the partner is shared that's a problem; all LMDh-spec prototypes are built with one of four options, and Oreca is one of just two manufacturers that has partnered with multiple brands to date. The Oreca-based cars revealed so far have a unique problem over the Dallara-based cars: All three of the Acura , Alpine , and Genesis racers built on the Oreca chassis so far share a frustratingly familiar shape, complete with an elevated front wing section that Acura debuted on its previous-generation Oreca DPi.

When asked about the experience of working with a chassis partner that has three other OEM partners, Sayers tells Road & Track in a roundtable that "Ford would like the hypercar to represent Ford. " A previous generation of Ford prototype at Le Mans Bernard Cahier - Getty Images "So the aerodynamics and body shape, we have a lot of input from our studio. It's not just clearly done from an Oreca aerodynamics perspective; we have our aero team, we have our studio.