Driving the Ford Mustang Dark Horse R makes every other pony feel tame

We try Ford's latest track-only Mustang.

Tim Stevens – Jan 31, 2025 5:10 PM | 32

In March, the Mustang Challenge series will join IMSA's support races, with a grid of Mustang Dark Horse Rs. Credit: Tim Stevens

CHARLOTTE, NC—It's amazing how much more raucous you can make a car feel simply by deleting every semblance of creature comfort. That's the basic idea of the Mustang Dark Horse R, a track-only flavor of the Mustang for the dedicated Mustang Challenge series, which will run in support of many IMSA races this year, starting with the Twelve Hours of Sebring in March. Despite running the same 500 hp (373 kW) 5.0 L Coyote engine as the road-going Dark Horse, slotted into the same chassis and bodywork, it's a far more engaging drive—and a wildly good time.

It all looks pretty tame from the outside, as it sports the familiar Mustang shape that has hardly changed over the last few generations. Even the wing is slender by race car standards, only subtly different from the one on the road-going Dark Horse.

But peek inside and you start to see the scope of the modifications. The sound-deadening material has been evicted, with leather and vinyl trimming replaced by a roll cage that spans the now-vacant space. A bright red fire extinguisher now sits where the rear seat once was.

Mustang Dark Horse R interior — Credit: Tim Stevens

The inners of the doors are gone, with handles replaced by a simple rope loop. Give it a tug when it's time to get out. There's no key fob, just a set of toggle switches in the center console. They're labeled with white stickers, each slightly misaligned.

But the road car's red Engine Start button is still there. Put the car in neutral, foot on the clutch, stab that button, and the Coyote fires to life, just like in a road-going Dark Horse (assuming you remembered to flip the aforementioned ignition toggle, anyway—I didn't on my first go).

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The engine may be stock, but it sure doesn't sound like it. With all the interior trimmings evicted and a track-only Borla exhaust fitted, the car becomes a deafening echo chamber when its Coyote is breathing. Given that it has its roots in a road car, the 5.0 L offers a smooth idle, but you can still feel it deep in your body, communicated up through the full Recaro racing seat.

The steering wheel is track-spec, too, a Sparco steering wheel that replaces the big, leather-wrapped one in the road car. Behind that, the 12.4-inch digital gauge cluster is gone. A MoTeC display instead stands proud, the sort that you'd expect to find in a real race car, which this, of course, very much is.

It surely shifts like a race car, with linkage connected to an upright plastic shift knob. It offers no semblance of padding and communicates everything that's happening in the transmission through your fingertips, though the clutch action is far lighter than the one on your average track toy. This made it a breeze to swing out of the pit lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway, far easier than the hair-trigger clutch on most track-only machines.

The shift action is delightfully short, too, and though that MoTeC gauge cluster had a sweeping tachometer running across the top, I didn't need it. The sound of that Coyote and the way it shook my core made it pretty clear when it was time to grab another gear.

I did a lot of running up and down those gears as I swung the Dark Horse R through the twisty infield at Charlotte, gradually gaining confidence in pushing the car and its Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires a bit more. As I began to feel the limits, it was pretty clear that the car's manually adjustable Multimatic DSSV suspension and alignment had been configured in a very safe way.

When I cranked that Sparco steering wheel over aggressively mid-turn, the car just fell into terminal understeer, patiently plowing straight ahead until I wound back to a more reasonable steering angle. Given that this Mustang has neither traction nor stability control, with 500 hp going straight through the limited-slip rear differential and to the road with no digital abatement, that was probably for the best, especially because I had just a handful of laps to get comfortable.

The back half of a Ford Mustang Dark Horse R — Credit: Tim Stevens

Needless to say, the experience left me wanting more. Buyers of this $145,000 track toy are in for a real treat, especially those lucky enough to compete in the race series. The Mustang Dark Horse R gives all the right feels and experience of a proper racing machine like the GT3 or GT4 flavors, but at a much more attainable cost. It's familiar enough to be manageable but still unbridled enough to deliver the proper experience that any would-be racer wants.

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