Rockenfeller: Big Win for Mustang GT3 in “Ford City”

Photo: Brett Farmer/IMSA

Mike Rockenfeller hailed his and Seb Priaulx’s GTD Pro class victory in Saturday’s Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Challenge as a “big fight” in the “Ford city.”

The drivers of the No. 64 Multimatic Motorsports-run Ford Mustang GT3 claimed their first victories with the brand, coming on the heels of their teammates’ breakthrough class win in January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

It marked Rockenfeller’s first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship win since 2017.

“It’s really cool,” he said. “It’s a long time. It just shows how difficult it is. You need to have the right package, the right team and right car as a driver.

“Luckily we had that all together today here in Detroit over the whole weekend.

“Starting from pole, of course, you want to win a street race. It’s the best position, as we all know.

“Still, a lot of things happen with the yellows. The pit stop for us was the crucial moment. We just made it in time. We had like 14 seconds to do it and it was just about right.

“After that, I tried to make the Mustang as wide as I could to keep those yellow cars behind.”

When asked about maintaining his gap to the No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Alexander Sims in the end, Rockenfeller admitted that the Corvette was pushing “really hard.”

“As we all know in IMSA, there can be chaos and of course, I was quite happy to see prototypes coming because the Corvette was pushing really hard behind me and I knew there were opportunities to open up the gap,” he said.

“That worked out for me.

“I had the feeling that I’m the Ford city! Of course, as you can imagine, we are racing everybody, but it’s definitely great for Ford to have the [Corvette] behind us, clearly.

“I think you all know this is a big fight between the two brands and clearly we are happy today.”

Priaulx, who started on pole, controlled the first half of the 100-minute street race, in what marked back-to-back wins in Detroit for the Multimatic-contracted driver.

“I think for myself, it was just to keep the car clean for Mike,” he said. “It was the best view for Turn 1 to have that clear air and I think I timed it just right at the start, so I was happy about that.

“I just had to keep it out of the walls, which I was happy I did. It was pretty smooth running, really, with just one yellow [during my stint].

“Apart from that, Mike did a great job. I handed it to him and he just finished the car in such a great place for us.

“I’m really happy with how it went. I can’t thank Ford and Multimatic enough for giving us a great car this weekend.”

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