The 2019 Shelby GT350
is available in two new
colors: Ford Performance
Blue and Velocity Blue, the
latter having supplanted
Lead Foot Gray. Other col-
ors include Lightning Blue
and Triple Yellow Tri-Coat.
We chose an Orange Fury
Tri-Coat Metallic version
for our photos shot on a
dreary Midwestern day.
Visibly the new 19-inch
aluminum wheels and new
rear spoiler/wing are what
set the 2019 version apart
from its predecessors.Under the hood, Ford Per-
formance engineers chose
not to mess with success.
The 5.2L Voodoo V-8 re-
mains unchanged from its
calibration to its flat-plane
crankshaft. It still pumps
out peak outputs of 526
hp and 429 lb-ft of torque,
and really screams from
the midrange to the top of
the tach. A notable change
in the engine compart-
ment is the inclusion of
adjustable strut mounts
that allow owners to dial
in camber settings at the
track.WWW.MUSTANG-360.COM OCTOBER 2019 55benefits at street speeds,
and you likely won’t notice
the stiffer front springs or
softer rear springs. The
R-model rear sway bar don’t
really give themselves away
there either, thanks in part
to the electronic magic of
MagneRide. Transitioning in
and out of the corners on the
race track is where they are
readily apparent, when they
work in concert with the
improved programming and
more advanced MagnaRide
algorithm.
“Then you bring in
MagnaRide and that’s really
the icing on the cake to get
it all working together,” Wid-
mann enthuses. “And then
your ABS calibration and
EPAS has calibration to kind
of bring it all together. As
you torque on the wheel you
can actually feel that the cars
were much more predict-
able, easier, more linear, all
that comes together, and
then that’s how you can get a
lower professional lap time,
but you can also flatter the
driver and be more intui-
tive.”
In cases where your
scribe successfully and less
successfully navigated the
M3 turns, the 2019 Shelby
GT350 proved forgiving of
errors and rewarding of the
right choices. Like a good
teacher, it encourages you to
expand your horizons, push
a little harder, and try theless restrictive drive modes.
When you do so, the brakes
become pretty important,
and that’s an area where
Ford Performance’s tech
transfer from professional
drivers plays a key role.
“We had actually
changed the strategy to
change the capability so that
we could change that pro-
portioning and still do trail
braking, so that we can get
professional lap time better,”
Widmann says of race driver
Billy Johnson’s impact on
the brake tuning. “But also
the big thing was to get it
more intuitive. So again,
this vehicle is much more
like flattering the driver and
their capability and a com-fort level on a track.”
Widmann continues,
“That’s why we’ll have Billy
drive and our guys drive,
because we’ll jump Billy into
like three different types of
cars while he’s driving. So
he’s really, really in tune as
he jumps from car to car,
because he uses the feel to
place the car in its ulti-
mately capability. We may
have more lap time in that
particular version than Billy
does to get it for that at that
lap time, but his impressions
are so top-of-mind that he
can explain what he feels
as he goes in and out of a
curve.”
As a driver of both the
Ford Performance FIA