Ford, HRT Tackling “Huge” N24-24H Spa Double Header

Haupt Racing Team and Ford Performance are set to tackle a “huge” double header of 24-hour races, as the German team and the Blue Oval enter five cars across the Nürburgring 24 and CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

In addition to the Ford Mustang GT3’s debut at the N24, which will be run with three cars, HRT Ford Performance will also be contesting the 24H Spa with a two-car entry.

As team CEO Ulrich Fritz explained, those five cars form the bulk of HRT’s existing fleet of cars, which it rotates across the multiple championships that the team competes in.

In addition to its Nürburgring and GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS programs, HRT Ford Performance also races in DTM and ADAC GT Masters.

“We just allocate them to the different events,” Fritz told Sportscar365.

“But the three cars that are running here [at the N24] are not the ones that are running next weekend. Because the cars that are running next weekend are already prepared in the workshop.

“They were loaded [Thursday] for the track already so everything is fixed and they can go [to Spa] Monday.”

Fritz explained that a similar level of separation has been applied to its roster of team personnel, explaining that the two races will be contested by “more or less completely separated teams.”

“The engineers are the same, yes, but on the mechanic side we have a dedicated GT World Challenge team and a dedicated GT Masters and DTM team,” Fritz said.

“This event here is mainly done by our GT Masters and DTM staff.”

Fritz made no illusions about the scope of the operation that the team faces across the next two weekends, but was quick to point out that it has made preparations to be ready for the intense double header.

“It’s a huge operation,” said Fritz. “But in the end, we are somehow scaled for that operation.

“If you look at it, apart from last weekend, we have been racing more or less every weekend with GT Masters, with GT World Challenge, with NLS races and whatever.

“So the size of the team has been created to undergo such effort. But of course it’s still a big effort to put five cars into two 24 hour races within weeks. That is for sure.

“Also with the parts supply, with all the topics that are involved. It’s a challenge, but I think we knew it was coming and we tried to do the best out of it.”

HRT’s efforts across the two events are bolstered by a support network from Ford, which consists of engineering support as a dedicated spare parts network in place at both 24-hour races.

Alex Allmandinger, Ford Performance’s global sports car manager, described the task of providing adequate spare parts support as a “big logistic challenge,” which is tackled by a dedicated European network.

“It’s huge,” Allmandinger told Sportscar365.

“We’ve got a full part support team based in Europe and then we’ve got ones based in the U.S. as well. And then we’ll [have] trailer support parts to each of these European events.

“Especially the big ones, like a 24-hour race, you want to basically refresh all the parts in the car and then also refresh all the parts [in stock] and make sure everything is fully stocked in the trailers.

“Basically be ready for anything because these long events are very, very tough.

“You hope that you’re fully prepared and everything is going to go well, but you need to have everything with you and ready at the track. So it’s a big logistic challenge.

“All the parts are obviously manufactured all over the world as well, so getting them from both the U.S., the U.K., and continental Europe to the racetrack on time and ready for the race is really important and a big challenge.”

Meanwhile, on the engineering side, Allmandinger explained that Ford Performance has deployed a squad of engineers that is “basically jumping from event to event” with a small handful of them currently on-site at the Nürburgring.

“We’ve got our partners in Multimatic and M-Sport supporting in addition to the Ford engineers as well, so our support team is actually quite large,” he said.

“We have a lot of overlap between the team that’s in most of the European races as well as some of the U.S. races as well.

“The Ford powertrain team is all based in the U.S and they’ll be supporting races in WEC, GT World Challenge, NLS, DTM, all of the big areas we compete in Europe.

“And then they’re also supported by additional M-Sport engineers.

“It’s a really good opportunity to constantly be not only growing and developing our own engineers, our own talent, but learning at a very, very high rate.

“We’re a year and a half into the program now. So things are pretty well developed, but there’s always opportunities to continue to learning and you know making small improvements every single weekend.”