With Triple Eight Race Engineering heading back to Ford for the 2026 Supercars season, team principal Jamie Whincup is interested in expanding operations to other disciplines. Maybe even new terrain.

Speaking with Speedcafe on Friday, Whincup emphasized that he would like Triple Eight to be more than just another team. While Supercars remains the priority, he added the team would “really want to be a performance partner of Ford Performance for a long time to come.”

He threw out various ideas on what T8 could do with the Blue Oval. To be more precise, he envisioned spamming Ford Performance Motorsports’ global director Mark Rushbrook with phone calls about what series the team can race in.

“Mark will be annoyed at me because I’ll be ringing him every five minutes to say, you know, ‘What about Mustang Challenge? What about GT racing? What about the Finke Desert Race?’ We want to be a real performance partner down under and share that experience across multiple levels of motorsport,” Whincup continued.

Finke obviously sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the Mustang Challenge, an American IMSA series for the Mustang Dark Horse that debuted in 2024, and Grand Touring. After all, Whincup is talking about the biggest off-road race in Australia compared to the pavement-based touring and sports cars of the others, Supercars included. Triple Eight is also no stranger to GT racing, having competed in GT3 with Mercedes-AMG since 2019.

However, Ford Performance is no stranger to Finke. Since 2023, the company has fielded the Ford Ranger Raptor at Finke in partnership with ex-Supercars team Kelly Racing and Brad Lovell. The Ranger Raptor has been successful since then, winning the Production 4WD class at Finke in 2023 and 2024. Lovell set the record for fastest time from Finke to Alice Springs during the 2023 race.

The 2024 Finke Desert Race saw a duel between Ford and Chevrolet, the latter fielding a Chevrolet Silverado ZR2 for Supercars great Craig Lowndes in his Finke competition debut. Lowndes was knocked out by a mechanical failure on the final day, allowing Lovell to cruise to the win.

The Ranger has also won its class in all three attempts at the Baja 1000. Lovell topped Stock Mid-Size in 2022 and 2023 followed by Heavy Metal Limited at the latest edition.

One of the most decorated teams in Supercars history, Triple Eight previously raced with Ford from its formation in 2003 to 2009 before switching to Holden in 2010. Holden’s exit in 2022 led to a three-year stint in fellow General Motors brand Chevrolet.

Featured image credit: BrettHemmings.com