“In 2020, FIRST Motorsport accomplished a lot of “firsts”. A first win for the team. A first win for Felix Perez. A first win at home, with Will winning at Indy. A first finish in the top 3 of the constructors’ championship. If we can improve on that season in 2021 then it will be a hell of a season, and that is the goal. For this season we have a lot of continuity within the team. The same driver lineup, largely the same engineering staff, and largely the same sponsors. The only real change was in ownership, with Palmetto Racing Group coming in as co-owners to take the team to the next level financially. We are excited to move into our new race shop near Rock Hill, South Carolina soon and for how much of an improvement it will be over the current shop we have. As many of you know, for the last couple years we have been naming our cars after prominent American engineers in motorsport. This year is no different, as we have elected to name 2021’s car after the legendary Jack Roush. Jack started his career working as an engine development engineer for Ford in 1964. He got his start in motorsport around 1970 when he started his own drag racing team that competed in the NHRA and other national series. He started his company, Roush Performance, in 1976 that designed, manufactured, and sold engines to teams across many motorsports disciplines. In the 80s, Roush got back into racing with his own team and had a lot of success with Ford sports cars in IMSA and the SCCA, winning many races and championships – including 10 class victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona. In the late 80s, Jack started a NASCAR team that has gone on to win 3 drivers’ championships and 2 Daytona 500 victories. In the meantime, Roush Performance has become an integral part of Ford’s road car performance engineering and marketing strategy. Roush has led the way on the design of the engines for the most recent generations of the Ford GT, as well as high performance Mustangs like the GT350 and the GT500. Roush also sells lots of Ford aftermarket parts and their own versions of the Mustang, F150, and Ranger. Clearly, naming our car after someone as successful with Jack only adds pressure to ourselves to succeed, but we welcome it and hope to honor Jack’s accomplishments with our performance on track this season. With no further ado, I present the FIRST Motorsport Roush 21!” “As you can see, the livery is largely unchanged and we’ve retained most of our partners from previous years. The support from partners like Ford, Motorcraft, Verizon, Sonoco, HP, 3M, Jif, and Goodyear has been great and those relationships continue to grow. We’ve added two new sponsors for this season: Kroger and YouTube. Two strong American companies that are only growing in their respective industries and we are excited to work with both of them throughout the season and beyond. And now it is time for the part you guys have all been waiting for. Stefan [Klien], get in there and show them what this thing can do!” With that the crew strapped Stefan into the car and set off for a 10 lap demonstration lap around the 3.27 mile road course. Stefan managed a best time of 1:23.6, which is an unofficial lap record of the track and capped the run off with some donuts in front of the media on the front straight. We were lucky enough to get onboard footage of the fast lap thanks to the team. The esses in particular are crazy in a FV car!
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