Holt: Multimatic ‘Better Prepared’ Than Ford GT Debut

Photo: Wes Duenkel/Ford

Multimatic is in a significantly better position with the debuting Ford Mustang GT3 than it was with the first race for the Ford GT program according to Larry Holt, who is bullish on his team’s level of execution.

Ford Multimatic Motorsports, along with GTD privateer squad Proton Competition, will be giving the car its much-anticipated first race outing in this weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona following years of development and build-up.

Built, developed and raced by Multimatic, the multi-national operation whose motorsports programs are spearheaded by Holt, the factory IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD Pro program comes six years after the launch of the Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT effort that also debuted at Daytona that Multimatic also played a pivotal part in.

“In 2016, when we came, we were not as prepared as where we are now. Not even close,” Holt told Sportscar365.

“As you know, 30 minutes in [to the Rolex 24], we lost a shift actuator on one of the cars. That was a bad solder joint in a supplier part, etc. It was somebody else’s fault but it [ended up being] my fault.

“We won’t have that [now]; Bad execution we won’t have. But there’s all that Vegas type of stuff that befalls you.

“You just came into [the pits], you go out, and you get a bad yellow at the wrong time. There’s all kinds of stuff.”

While the Ford GT would go on to win the GTLM class at Daytona in both 2017 and 2018, the works program wound down at the end of 2019, with Multimatic going on to operate the factory Mazda DPi effort with success.

Led by team principal Charlie Cadieux, Holt said the Ford Multimatic race team is largely made up of crew from the former Mazda program, with six or seven staff having previously also worked on Ford’s GTE-Pro effort in the FIA World Endurance Championship that was also run by Multimatic.

“If there’s two or three guys there that I’ve never worked before, that’s all we got. That’s the only new element,” Holt said.

“It’s really tight, good, experienced. Charlie is a rockstar.

“From an execution standpoint, I’m still sitting up there [on the pit box] making calls. I don’t do all the analysis but I am that guy that goes, ‘Now would be a time to stop.’

“We do that. You have to have a bit of that. We have really experienced race engineers.

“I’m super confident on the execution side. But anything can happen. We’ve done everything we can with the cars but this place is a little bit like going to Vegas. Sometimes the weird guy wins.

“But it also pays. Look how many times Chip [Ganassi] has won. That’s experience, a good team and good execution and I have that all around me.”

Ford Performance global motorsports director Mark Rushbrook echoed Holt’s comments.

“We feel better prepared,” Rushbrook told Sportscar365. “A lot of that is what we learned in 2016. We had done about 7,500 km of testing on the Ford GT before we came here.

“Our first [Mustang GT3] test car, we’ve got 15,000 km, twice as much, plus additional miles on another car, almost close to 5,000 kms on that.

“A lot more testing and simply more miles/kilometers doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better prepared.

“But I think we’ve got the right people. Our relationship with Multimatic has just grown stronger and stronger through everything we’ve experienced in the four years of the GT program and now the development of all these other cars simultaneously.

“We’ve got the right people focused on it. I think we’ve tested at the right tracks under the right situations.

“But until you get into the race and into the real battle you might see something you didn’t expect.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John