No one will deny that Ford’s Shelby GT500 Mustang is the pinnacle of Blue Oval car performance at the moment. But even as Ford Performance continues to come up with new ways to enhance this flagship pony, rivals will continue to rise to the challenge of contesting its supremacy.
The Shelby GT500 is one serious monster, and very soon owners will get the chance to sport (even more) Ford Performance-created carbon fiber components to try and keep the lightweight pace with challengers. Still, the machine itself can only do so much; the rest is up to the human behind the wheel.
That’s pretty much obvious in this series of encounters presented by the Drag Racing and Car Stuff YouTube channel. In this feature (video embedded below), the focus is on a Rapid Red 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 that’s no longer stock. According to the description, it’s got “just a few things done,” such as an intake and x-pipe, as well as an E93 tune by 2Fast Performance.
And the fact that in drag racing, the driver has a crucial influence over the performance is pretty much adamant. But let’s put things into the proper chain of events to get the entire perspective. From the beginning, we see the GT500 lined up with an import foe, the BMW M4, but the first run is done with the timers off for some reason.
According to the blinkers, the ‘Stang made short work of the German contender, but the owner probably called for a rematch because the two line up once more, and disaster strikes. After a very bad start, the GT500 gets easily dismissed to find other rivals with an 11.69s to 12.08-second result in favor of the M4.
At least we’ll give perseverance points to the Shelby driver because he’s going to be relentless from now on. Next up (1:57 mark), he lines up with an Accord to properly wash out the shame with an 11.85-second win in preparation for a family war.
That’s because an E85-tuned 2020 Mustang GT is coming to the battle for a trio of runs (some of them during late at night) from the 4:05 mark. Still, it seems that in the quarter-mile world, there’s no room for brotherly love. As such, the GT500 driver seems to be getting better and better, going down from 10.56 to 10.4 and then to 10.36-second runs while the opponent hovers around the 11.8-11.9s threshold.
Consistency isn’t its strongest suit, though, because from the 5:40 mark onwards, the GT500 again loses a tempo and comes out victorious against an S550 Mustang EcoBoost and BMW 6 Series simply because the latter two were much slower (in the 12-second ballpark).
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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