Hand Helping Mustang GT3 Customers “Be Faster, Quicker”

Photo: Wes Duenkel/Ford

Joey Hand has embraced his new role within Ford Performance as the sports car racing veteran is looking forward to helping new and future Mustang GT3 customer teams get up to speed with the car.

The 45-year-old Californian, who was one of the primary development drivers with the car, has shifted from Ford’s factory GTD Pro race lineup to the GTD ranks this year with customer squad Gradient Racing, which is making its debut with the Multimatic-built machine.

Hand, who is so far confirmed for the Michelin Endurance Cup races in the No. 66 car in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, has been tasked with also helping other Mustang GT3 customers come to grips with the platform as they come online.

“This program was built with customers in mind, to have customer cars,” he told Sportscar365. “It’s great to have factory cars and all that but a big part of the Mustang GT3 is going to be the customer cars.

“As more and more customers [arrive], it’s already being talked about me helping out on their initial tests and trying to do the same thing where I can get in there and accelerate the curve a little bit.

“I’m a race car driver but I also see what goes on with the cars a lot too.

“At home I work on my own stuff. Chase (Joey’s son) and I are doing late models and go-karts, we do our own stuff. I know a decent bit about the mechanics of the car also.

“I can help also with a lot of those things, like directing setup and things we’ve done that we know we didn’t like or things that can be a potential that we haven’t gotten to and stuff like that.

“My number one thing is that I come to race. I leave home because I love racing, that battle, the mental warfare and all that.

“But second to that, to me, it’s the feedback part, the development park, and in this case, giving the feedback to these guys and trying to help them be faster, quicker.”

Hand, who has remained a Ford Performance factory driver, said he’s hopeful of again making outings in NASCAR this year following his fourth place finish in last year’s Cup Series race on the streets of Chicago.

“In the background, I still do all of the NASCAR stuff for Ford,” he said. “I do all the simulator stuff for the road courses. I coach all Ford NASCAR drivers – Cup, XFinity and Truck – in the simulator prior to every road course event.

“I also drive the Wheel Force test car and the Ford test car.

“When you look at that, it’s six races and five days of that each. That’s 30 days in the sim doing NASCAR stuff.

“Would I like to do a couple of NASCAR races? For sure.

“The Chicago thing was awesome last year. Everybody’s like, ‘Man, we’d love to have you back.’ But you never know how it’s going to play out.”