Improved Ranger completes 10,000km test and development programme

Improvements to the Ford Ranger T1+ ahead of next year’s Dakar Rally have been “accelerated” with the support of M-Sport and Ford Performance, its creator Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) has said.

Jason Craig_1

07 Jul 2023

Last month, Ford announced a factory-backed attack of the Saudi Arabia-based rally-raid endurance event with the help of British team M-Sport and South African-based NMW.

Since then, the Ranger has undergone a comprehensive test and development exercise in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Totalling 10,000 kilometres – or more than than two Dakar rallies – engineers have focused their attention on the Ranger T1+’s chassis, cooling and performance, and also its reliability.

As well as increasing the strength and rigidity of the vehicle’s foundations, it is now said to be more capable than ever thanks to the introduction of bespoke dampers developed by Reiger Suspension.

Having been successfully homologated, NWM founder Neil Woolridge has confirmed the up-dates are now being added to all future orders of the four-wheel-drive competition vehicle.

“We value the partnership with M-Sport and Ford Performance – and the opportunity it has created to accelerate the development of our T1+ Ranger in preparation for next year’s Dakar Rally,” reflected Woolridge. “This will allow us to showcase the performance and capabilities of our car on the international stage.”

“With M-Sport and NWM working together and completing around 10,000 kilometres of testing since last year in several locations and weather conditions, we have been able to fine-tune every part of the car, and the progress has been really satisfying. We look forward to seeing how the updated T1+ Ranger fares on the international rally raid scene.”

M-Sport’s Technical Director Chris Williams drilled further down into the revisions that have been made, with the new damper being joined by a different wishbone set-up for “improved motion ratio”. Having tested both, he claims the Ranger benefits from “significant improvements in performance”.

He said: “One of the biggest challenges has been optimising the cooling packages on the vehicle. We focussed on simplifying and improving efficiency of the coolers. Using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), we have studied the aerodynamics to understand the vehicle air flow and learn how best to extract heat at different speeds.

“To validate our changes, we have tested in Dubai, South Africa and Morocco which all had ambient temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius.”

The real test of how the refreshed Ranger T1+ stacks up will come when it goes up against the clock, added Williams, given that the main development phase is now completed. Its first competitive outing will come at this month’s Baja España Aragón Rally in Spain followed by Morocco’s Rally du Maroc from October 4th-9th.