Ford GT team in the American LeMans series
- Thread starter Cyclenirvana
- Start date
wb1
Member
I've got to get the exact dates, but mid-Jan. I've got the mailing around here somewhere if my wife didn't file it.
John
John
AZGT
GT Owner
D
Deleted member 2175
Guest
D
Deleted member 2175
Guest
Hey...what about the Houston race??
http://www.grandprixofhouston.com/tickets_info.html
We are having a charity race also...great suite tickets available...I can get as many as needed. I will be running my Panoz GTS if I don't blow the motor again like I did last year in practice!!
http://www.msrhouston.com/msrhouston/experiences_MSRcharityrace08.asp
Hello to all you fellow ford gt fans.
this is an overdue letter to you from us at fordgttv.com and me Oliver and the doran-kuttner ford gtr program. We are doing the Ford gt racer right and doing so costs a lot of money and time. it will have been worth it though. In this letter I will give you an update as best as I can. I also invite you to be our friend and give you my phone number and e mail as it is not guarranteed that I will check in on the forum any time soon with any reliability. Phone 434 806 2435. Olibor1@aol.com please do not abuse this information.
Here is the update. At this time there are 5 cars in production. You should see one at the ACO winter test. You should see at least 2 (customer cars- Robertson and Pappas) at the 12 Hours of Sebring. It is our intention to bring at least one house car also but we may not have completed such a car by then. At this point we have only concentrated on building the best car possible. Once we have made all the parts required by our customer teams and our house team cars we will make select parts available to you if you want them. These will include a version of our rollcage a very substantial suspension upgrade and all panels in carbon (with the car at 2 meters (maximum allowed) with. If anyone wants to be involved at this time we will need to find a real sponsor for the house car(s). A full season will cost around 2 to 3 million dollars for one car and 4 to 5 million for two cars. This is to a standard that has a real chance to win.
Now aside from the above invitation to get involved I will now bore (or excite) you with technical information. Your Ford GT as you may know is one of the best production chassis out there with an examplary stock torsional rigidity (ca 18000 degree foot pounds) Our rollcage moves the car into GTP plus territory.
Our car will come with a standard 110 liter fuel system that car be reduced to 90 liters of racing fuel or can run 110 liters of E 85 green racing fuel (we are experimenting with both engines as we speak - That was Tim Pappas's idea and may be very sound thinking). Thus we may have a green car at Sebring??
My wife wants me to go to dinner now I will continue a little later. regards so far.
Oliver Kuttner
this is an overdue letter to you from us at fordgttv.com and me Oliver and the doran-kuttner ford gtr program. We are doing the Ford gt racer right and doing so costs a lot of money and time. it will have been worth it though. In this letter I will give you an update as best as I can. I also invite you to be our friend and give you my phone number and e mail as it is not guarranteed that I will check in on the forum any time soon with any reliability. Phone 434 806 2435. Olibor1@aol.com please do not abuse this information.
Here is the update. At this time there are 5 cars in production. You should see one at the ACO winter test. You should see at least 2 (customer cars- Robertson and Pappas) at the 12 Hours of Sebring. It is our intention to bring at least one house car also but we may not have completed such a car by then. At this point we have only concentrated on building the best car possible. Once we have made all the parts required by our customer teams and our house team cars we will make select parts available to you if you want them. These will include a version of our rollcage a very substantial suspension upgrade and all panels in carbon (with the car at 2 meters (maximum allowed) with. If anyone wants to be involved at this time we will need to find a real sponsor for the house car(s). A full season will cost around 2 to 3 million dollars for one car and 4 to 5 million for two cars. This is to a standard that has a real chance to win.
Now aside from the above invitation to get involved I will now bore (or excite) you with technical information. Your Ford GT as you may know is one of the best production chassis out there with an examplary stock torsional rigidity (ca 18000 degree foot pounds) Our rollcage moves the car into GTP plus territory.
Our car will come with a standard 110 liter fuel system that car be reduced to 90 liters of racing fuel or can run 110 liters of E 85 green racing fuel (we are experimenting with both engines as we speak - That was Tim Pappas's idea and may be very sound thinking). Thus we may have a green car at Sebring??
My wife wants me to go to dinner now I will continue a little later. regards so far.
Oliver Kuttner
Last edited:
Le Mans specification Ford GT
I take the opportunity to continue telling you about our effort of building the Ford GT ALMS GT2 cars. First as we all know the racer is lighter than the street car. However this is not true for all components and in the Ford GT many components are already quite well made and light. For example the racer has a heavier transmission. There is a rollcage made of steel which adds weight and there is a full bellypan stipulated by the rules and a wing and airjacks which all weigh something. The cooling system is more stout, and there are extras like additional computers and radio and telemetry, a more complicated fueltank and system and the addition of much larger (and heavier) brakes as well as single nut hubs. In addition we set out to spec our cars to become very nice track cars or enthusiast cars after their life in professional racing is over. To this end we designed the cars to have a passenger compartment that is actually usable for a passenger and an entry that is possible without crazy contortions.
Thus, regardless our minimum weight requirement is 2450 American pounds which we would like to beat by as much as possible. Ideally we would carry around 200 pounds of lead weight but we do not know yet. We do know that we will be below the minimum weight. In order to achieve this we very quickly abandoned using production parts. Thus it took us a full 6 months longer than originally hoped for. Today we have a full digital file for the car and will go through girations such as making our own glass windshields (Ford is presently out). All this adds in time but in the end it makes for a better more purpose built racecar. GT2 is shaping up to be very hotly contested and we want to be a serious contender thus we took the plunge. Other things that may interest you is that we designed our own suspension mounts with our own billet control arms and uprights. All this with our own suspension geometry which is set for a 2 inch ground clearance car. The shocks are a set of Olins and for now we will run 6 puck brembo calipers.
The transmission is a sequential Emco which can handle up to 800 hp for 24 hour duty. The car is designed to run either the GT2 engine which is the same basic engine of the Ford GT except normally aspirated with our own 8 trumpet fuel injection system (which unrestricted can produce over 900 hp). The other engine that will bolt in is the Roush "D" block Nextel Cup block which can be ordered to Le Mans Specs as last run in an open cockpit Riley and Scott LMP900 car (that was a "B" block but is the same family). As you can gather the car has growth potential. As I said in my first letter we are producing parts for 5 car sets now. Once the cars hit the track we will build another batch for which we believe we have two buyers so far. Watch us and let us know if you want a car. The size of that batch will be decided in late spring and it may be the only other batch we build as we have some other exciting projects on the table now. Ideally we would like to build as many as 10 more cars in the second batch. The cars are pricey compared to a road car at a base price of $623,000.-- but they are certainly unique. In many ways they are nicer built than some of the more costly equivalents from Italy. As a collectable car they also have the added advantage that, as an aluminum tub car, they will age gracefully which is not the case with carbon chassis cars. We will be very busy getting the cars done in the next few months. Sometime in spring however I want to go on a roadtrip around the USA with one of the racers. I would like to have receptions at several places which can be tracks, events or shops or enthusiast's houses. We want to make the car available to those who care and I invite you to let me know if you want to be involved. For now we will at least stop at Chuck Wray's shop near Dulles Airport in Washington (DEW motorcar Co.) , at the Coady's Hicks Ford dealership in Roberts Illinois, at Steve Jenning's shop in Salt Lake City (Toelle UT), at Bob Bondurant's place in Arizona as well as at some yet to be determined locations in California, Texas and Florida at minimum. On our USA tour we also want to make the racer available to several magazines if they are interested for road tests.
As you may have gathered from the Fordgttv.com website there is some quality filming going on. In the end (and possibly in between) there will be some retail film media in the form of at least a dokumentary or possible more. Much of this hinges on whom we can get interested in sponsoring the house GT to race at ALMS and possibly in Europe.
The Doran Daytona prototype program stays in good hands with the support of Kodak which has increased last year's the support and now all we need is someone to do the same for the GT. The GT is run as a separate stand alone program and we can offer some of the best names in motorsport to the right sponsor. We are totally convinced that we have a real winner from a marketing point of view. When people come to the shop they are always drawn to the GT even though at the shop we have everything from a Nissan NPTI GTP to a Dallara Judd LMP 900 to a 1.5 million dollar Maserarti MC12 and a batch of Daytona Prototypes (as well as other visitors).
The GT will be the marketing bargain of the ALMS. Anyway my salespitch aside let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to seeing some of you at the tracks next year many regards and happy holidays
Oliver Kuttner
I take the opportunity to continue telling you about our effort of building the Ford GT ALMS GT2 cars. First as we all know the racer is lighter than the street car. However this is not true for all components and in the Ford GT many components are already quite well made and light. For example the racer has a heavier transmission. There is a rollcage made of steel which adds weight and there is a full bellypan stipulated by the rules and a wing and airjacks which all weigh something. The cooling system is more stout, and there are extras like additional computers and radio and telemetry, a more complicated fueltank and system and the addition of much larger (and heavier) brakes as well as single nut hubs. In addition we set out to spec our cars to become very nice track cars or enthusiast cars after their life in professional racing is over. To this end we designed the cars to have a passenger compartment that is actually usable for a passenger and an entry that is possible without crazy contortions.
Thus, regardless our minimum weight requirement is 2450 American pounds which we would like to beat by as much as possible. Ideally we would carry around 200 pounds of lead weight but we do not know yet. We do know that we will be below the minimum weight. In order to achieve this we very quickly abandoned using production parts. Thus it took us a full 6 months longer than originally hoped for. Today we have a full digital file for the car and will go through girations such as making our own glass windshields (Ford is presently out). All this adds in time but in the end it makes for a better more purpose built racecar. GT2 is shaping up to be very hotly contested and we want to be a serious contender thus we took the plunge. Other things that may interest you is that we designed our own suspension mounts with our own billet control arms and uprights. All this with our own suspension geometry which is set for a 2 inch ground clearance car. The shocks are a set of Olins and for now we will run 6 puck brembo calipers.
The transmission is a sequential Emco which can handle up to 800 hp for 24 hour duty. The car is designed to run either the GT2 engine which is the same basic engine of the Ford GT except normally aspirated with our own 8 trumpet fuel injection system (which unrestricted can produce over 900 hp). The other engine that will bolt in is the Roush "D" block Nextel Cup block which can be ordered to Le Mans Specs as last run in an open cockpit Riley and Scott LMP900 car (that was a "B" block but is the same family). As you can gather the car has growth potential. As I said in my first letter we are producing parts for 5 car sets now. Once the cars hit the track we will build another batch for which we believe we have two buyers so far. Watch us and let us know if you want a car. The size of that batch will be decided in late spring and it may be the only other batch we build as we have some other exciting projects on the table now. Ideally we would like to build as many as 10 more cars in the second batch. The cars are pricey compared to a road car at a base price of $623,000.-- but they are certainly unique. In many ways they are nicer built than some of the more costly equivalents from Italy. As a collectable car they also have the added advantage that, as an aluminum tub car, they will age gracefully which is not the case with carbon chassis cars. We will be very busy getting the cars done in the next few months. Sometime in spring however I want to go on a roadtrip around the USA with one of the racers. I would like to have receptions at several places which can be tracks, events or shops or enthusiast's houses. We want to make the car available to those who care and I invite you to let me know if you want to be involved. For now we will at least stop at Chuck Wray's shop near Dulles Airport in Washington (DEW motorcar Co.) , at the Coady's Hicks Ford dealership in Roberts Illinois, at Steve Jenning's shop in Salt Lake City (Toelle UT), at Bob Bondurant's place in Arizona as well as at some yet to be determined locations in California, Texas and Florida at minimum. On our USA tour we also want to make the racer available to several magazines if they are interested for road tests.
As you may have gathered from the Fordgttv.com website there is some quality filming going on. In the end (and possibly in between) there will be some retail film media in the form of at least a dokumentary or possible more. Much of this hinges on whom we can get interested in sponsoring the house GT to race at ALMS and possibly in Europe.
The Doran Daytona prototype program stays in good hands with the support of Kodak which has increased last year's the support and now all we need is someone to do the same for the GT. The GT is run as a separate stand alone program and we can offer some of the best names in motorsport to the right sponsor. We are totally convinced that we have a real winner from a marketing point of view. When people come to the shop they are always drawn to the GT even though at the shop we have everything from a Nissan NPTI GTP to a Dallara Judd LMP 900 to a 1.5 million dollar Maserarti MC12 and a batch of Daytona Prototypes (as well as other visitors).
The GT will be the marketing bargain of the ALMS. Anyway my salespitch aside let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to seeing some of you at the tracks next year many regards and happy holidays
Oliver Kuttner
Last edited:
Kingman
GT Owner
olibor,
You mention - "For now we will at least stop at Chuck Wray's shop near Dulles Airport in Washington (DEW motorcar Co.) , at the Coady's Hicks Ford dealership in Roberts Illinois, at Steve Jenning's shop in Salt Lake City (Toelle UT), at Bob Bondurant's place in Arizona as well as at some yet to be determined locations in California, Texas and Florida at minimum."
Will you post dates on the Forum, or will they be on your website?
You mention - "For now we will at least stop at Chuck Wray's shop near Dulles Airport in Washington (DEW motorcar Co.) , at the Coady's Hicks Ford dealership in Roberts Illinois, at Steve Jenning's shop in Salt Lake City (Toelle UT), at Bob Bondurant's place in Arizona as well as at some yet to be determined locations in California, Texas and Florida at minimum."
Will you post dates on the Forum, or will they be on your website?
When we get ready to make our USA tour we will post the schedule here as well as on our website. We want to make it a fun trip so we are open to suggestions. If you let me know where there is interest we will try to ackomodate. Anyone who owns or for that matter loves the Ford GT is wellcome. I am not an active member of your club so my circle of friends I can call upon may not be normally crossing paths with you but the people I have dealt with around the USA over the years are very interesting car people so let me know if want us in your area. Regards Oliver
SteveA
GT Owner/B.O.D
SteveA
GT Owner/B.O.D
FlorIdaho Chris
Yeah, I've got one.
Steve- You coming to Florida? You must be bored...get that house started up north and you'll have something to do.:cheers
SteveA
GT Owner/B.O.D
We've decided to sell the house in So. Cal first before we start building. And yes, I'm bored out of my mind. :willy Mrs SteveA is still working on the books and won't be able to leave till after the first of the year. The selfish %^$#* frowns on me taking trips and going on dates when she stuck at work.:confused
Midnite Blu
GT Owner #755
Midnite Blu
GT Owner #755
ALMS for 2008
Thank you for being so upfront with the info. and specs. I'm sure all in this forum will look forward to your progress in 2008 in ALMS. Please keep us informed as to what is next......Thanks again
Thank you for being so upfront with the info. and specs. I'm sure all in this forum will look forward to your progress in 2008 in ALMS. Please keep us informed as to what is next......Thanks again
Kirby Vieira
GT Owner/B.o.D
B O N Y
MODERATOR & FGT OWNER
Midnite Blu
GT Owner #755
FrankBarba
Permanent Vacation
At 600K i would not be able to purchase, but have you considered a different version...A true Race Car but at a reduced price? Like Dodge did with the Viper Comp Coupe?