TBK-Light.com

Launceston: Rampant speculation that the Ford teams in Supercars will race Mustangs next year has almost certainly ruined any chance of a switch from the Falcon until 2019 at the earliest.

Widespread coverage of a report on Wednesday claiming the change to the Mustang had been decided has caused a serious setback to the teams' efforts to win Ford's support.

DJR Team Penske and Prodrive Racing Australia – the only teams racing Falcons in the Supercars championship – have been in long-running discussions with Ford in Australia and the US for approval of the project.

American-controlled DJR Team Penske have also been lobbying Ford's racing bosses at the company's headquarters in Detroit to provide technical support for the development of a V8 racing version of the Mustang.

Talks had reached a critical stage for a decision when the report that the deal had already been done went viral, forcing PRA – which it is alleged had started construction of Mustang V8 racer – to issue an emphatic denial.

Fairfax Media understands senior executives at Ford Australia and the company's Ford Performance racing division in the US were unhappy that its plans were being second-guessed in the media.

Ford's reaction was so adverse that DJRTP and PRA are now resigned to any hope of the company supporting a switch from the Falcon to the Mustang being, at best, delayed until much later this year.

The teams needed a decision by the end of this month at the latest to complete design and development of a Mustang-look Supercars racer in time to build replacements for their existing Falcon FG X racers for the 2018 season beginning next March.

DJRTP and PRA are collaborating on the project, and each has done preliminary computer design work to be prepared for the green light from Ford, which withdrew from Supercars at the end of 2015.

They have licensing agreements with Ford Australia to continue racing Falcons and display the company's famous blue oval logo on their race cars and team merchandise.

Although they could develop a Supercars version of the Mustang without Ford's approval, both teams want to make the switch from the Falcon with the company's blessing.

Although Ford Australia has no interest in re-entering Supercars with financial backing of the teams, Team Penske's status in America as Ford's leading NASCAR stock car racing squad had opened dialogue for technical support of the design of the aerodynamic body kit for a Mustang V8 racer.

With the Falcon now out of production, both DJRTP and PRA want to change to a current production model as soon as possible, as well as tapping into the popularity of the road-going Mustang, which is Australia's top selling sports car.

The two-door Mustang is eligible to join the traditional four-door sedan body shapes in V8 racing under the new Gen2 rules, which from this year allow coupes and also engine configurations other than V8s.

However, if the Supercars version of the Mustang goes ahead for 2019, it will retain the highly developed five-litre V8 that has powered racing Falcons for more than two decades.

Despite the political damage of this week's flurry of speculation, DJRTP and PRA remain confident that talks with Ford will resume and that an agreement to race Mustangs will eventually be reached for 2019 and beyond.