Mark Rushbrook

And then there was a rumor that that's not true at all.

The rumors, they always say it has to do with Mark Rushbrook, who's the head of Ford Racing.

And I know Mark Rushbrook.

We have a mutual friend.

I don't think that they were interested at all.

And now with the new Ford Racing Initiative bringing all of Ford's racing efforts under one roof, they have a new race in their sights.

In early 2026, Mark Rushbrook, the global director of Ford Racing, noted that the era of gathering data is over.

After securing a podium finish in 2025 and an even stronger double podium this year, victory is the only place left to go.

We were there.

But they have been doing their testing.

Uh, Mark Rushbrook is actually one of the, um, lead testers, and he said that this car is gonna be fantastic.

We've seen it testing at Paul Ricard.

Um, it's also been doing some tests in Silverstone.

All right, on Monday's Trackside Extra, which you can find on YouTube and regular podcast outlets, shared the story that I saw from a website that I wasn't super familiar with talking about Ford potentially having an interest in IndyCar.

And there was a quote from one of the heads of Ford, Mark Rushbrook, not shooting it down, saying we'll pass, you know, we'll consider anything.

And that was kind of my comment was maybe there's something to it.

But also when someone like Mark is going to be asked, he's a smart guy and he's not going to just outright say we would never consider that.

Well, there was an update on Wednesday afternoon from Racer.com after this kind of started spreading on Tuesday.

And now they are ready to shut it down.

Mark Rushbrook is Ford's Racing's global director.

And he says this is from Marshall Pruitt.

So it was kind of a crazy idea.

I actually first pitched it to Mark Rushbrook, our global director of motorsports.

And I think he thought equally, it was as crazy of an idea initially.

So We started putting together how it would come to life on the car, how we would take a primarily black car from 1901 that had some white accents, some gold accents, red accents, and how would we bring it to life on delivery for GT3.

I mean, the number of series that we're up to now, I need to go back and look at my notes, but it's around, I think, 36 series around the globe on all the different continents that there is racing happening we're involved in.

So, I mean, to see from where we started 125 years ago to now, I think something that Henry Ford would certainly be very proud of.

When you were putting this idea together and you took it to Mark Rushbrook, as you say, who's the global head of everything Ford racing, was there any pushback on this or did it immediately strike a chord with Mark and anybody else who had to know? I presume it went to Mr Farley as well.

Jim Farley is a racer.

And to be asked to do the Japan race, it was a real, it was an honour, really, I felt.

It's underscored by Mark Rushbrook coming here at the beginning of the year.

I know it was Bathurst 12 Hour and stuff, but I mean, he was there for the launch of what you guys were doing and so on.

Yeah.

You had some top brass from America come over.

Mark Rushbrook was there, for example, and so on.

to announce the fact that Midiki Motorsport was going to do two cars this year and you were going to give a couple of young blokes a chance in that machine.

I mean, you're continuing to bolster and build what you're doing here, aren't you? Yeah.