After 18 years within the skilled ranks of Method D, Vaughn Gittin, Jr. stepped away from the sequence in 2022. He informed Racer in 2021 he needed to “re-assess and simply concentrate on a pair different issues for a short while. My mindset is correct now that I can be again in Method Drift in a pair years to compete as soon as once more. Whether or not that’s just some rounds a 12 months or a whole championship effort.” Seems “a few years” meant only one. For this 12 months’s twentieth anniversary of Method D, Gittin returns in the identical automotive he used to win championships in 2010 and 2020, the Ford Mustang. Or, quite, a competition-spec drifter based mostly on Ford’s 2024 pony automotive. Known as the Mustang RTR Spec 5-FD, it would attempt to put one of many 4 drivers in Gittin’s RTR Automobiles staff again on the throne as king of slip angle.
The 1,300-horsepower Spec 5-FD will even be the archetype for patrons of the street-legal 2024 Mustang to emulate: Ford labored with Gittin and RTR staff driver Chelsea DeNofa to develop a competition-ready digital drift brake patrons can choice for the retail automotive. We do not have a lot for nitty gritty but on the way it all works. We all know that the system operates in monitor mode within the new Mustang, pulling a deal with that is like a mashup of drift lever and old school mechanical parking brake prompts the rear-wheel drift motion. Ford says pulling the deal with “emulates with electronics the hydraulic drift brake in RTR’s Method Drift Mustang, with greater than 3 times the braking drive of a traditional mechanical parking brake system.”
The choice is known as the Mustang Efficiency Digital Parking Brake provided along with the Efficiency Pack. It may be added to both engine, the two.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder or the 5.0-liter Coyote V8, and both transmission, the ten-speed automated or six-speed handbook. Checking the configurator, the Electrical Hand-Operated Parking Brake comes with the $3,475 Excessive Efficiency Bundle provided for the EcoBoost engine, or the $4,995 GT Efficiency Bundle provided on the V8. The brake comes commonplace on the Darkish Horse trim.
It has been designed with numerous talent ranges in thoughts, adjustable settings mentioned to permit novices to learn to throw the again out “and later change system settings to make use of in track-only competitors.”
As for Gittin, he’ll drive in 4 of this 12 months’s eight Method Drift rounds, sharing the motive force’s seat with staff member Adam LZ. We think about that when he isn’t within the automotive, he’ll be prepping the launch of RTR’s line of elements for the S650 Mustang, a few of that are shared with the Spec 5-FD racer.
