5 Cool Facts About the Sold-Out Ford Mustang FP350S Race Car

Unless you’ve got a GT4 racer in your garage, the FP350S is meaner and more capable on a track than your Mustang. Already sold out, the Ford Mustang FP350S is a Trans Am-ready turnkey race car—and we recently drove it. Don’t miss our full review of the car, but if you’re curious what goes into a $114,990 race car, keep reading.

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The Aluminator

The engine is closely related to Ford’s Aluminator 5.2 XS crate engine ($19,995 by itself). It features a unique Ford Performance M-6303-M52 forged-steel 90-degree crankshaft, Manley “H-Beam” connecting rods, Mahle forged pistons with low-friction coatings, and a host of other special parts including a special 12-quart steel oil pan fabricated with highly elaborate baffles and trapdoors to ensure adequate oiling under high g loads. The Aluminator is rated at 580 hp and 445 lb-ft of torque.

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Why the Brake Calipers Look Strange

The Radi-CAL calipers look kind of strange because they’re not styled to look symmetrical like most calipers. Instead, AP Racing used finite element analysis to optimize the shape. Any molecule of metal that wasn’t needed to make the caliper more rigid was eliminated, and voids were inserted to improve airflow and cooling. The calipers are also ultra-compact to enable, in some cases, smaller-diameter wheels than other calipers would require for a given rotor size. These ultra-rigid calipers and a firewall stiffened (by a factor of two or three) where the stock Shelby booster mounts help to remove all slop from the brake pedal feel.

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The (Adjustable) Wing

The rear wing is manually adjustable in half-degree increments between 0 and 12 degrees, by selecting various combinations of eight holes on the stanchions and 20 holes on the wing. The cars are shipped with the wing set to 8 degrees. The downforce is transmitted to the body via adjustable pads, and the trunklid itself gets reinforcing struts to bear the load.

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Info Stop

Three screens are offered: The warm-up screen prominently shows all fluid temperatures and a compact round tach. The qualifying screen indicates fastest lap time, a prediction of the current lap time and the gain/loss, along with a linear graphic tach and a few key fluid temps. The race screen shows the current lap time, lap number, fuel economy mode, fuel used on the last lap, and total fuel used along with the same graphic tach.

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The Totalizer Button

The center console area has buttons for pit lane speed control (PLSC), “spare” buttons for auxiliary helmet or suit coolers, and a “totalizer” button that you press when the tank is full to reset the fuel-use meter. The system then precisely measures fuel used by monitoring fuel-injector pulse-width so the driver knows precisely how much is left. Then he or she can use the “map” button to change fuel mapping to a leaner setting if conserving fuel might prevent a pit stop.

Find out how the Ford Mustang FP350S race car drives in our review right here.

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