Ford Performance has secured its second victory in a row at the gruelling Finke Desert Race with the Ford Ranger Raptor securing the Production 4WD class win with a final time of five hours, fifty-eight minutes, and twenty-three seconds (5:58:23).
Driven by Brad Lovell, and navigated by Byam Lovell, the #773 Ranger Raptor was the only vehicle in its class to finish both legs of the 2024 event which pushed man and machine to the limit in out Outback test of performance and endurance.
The back-to-back victory comes after a multi-day back-and-forth battle for the Production 4WD crown. During the run from Alice Springs to Aputula (Finke) the Ranger Raptor set a scorching early pace, overtaking its key rival 55 kilometres into the race after starting three minutes behind the first starter in class.
However, the 2024 Finke Desert Race wasn’t without its challenges, with the Ranger Raptor facing mechanical issues while pushing hard out on the course. Brad and Byam drove the final 130km of the track on day one with broken left-rear suspension, yet still managed to finish the first leg of the event five minutes faster than 2023 with a time of three hours and 35 seconds (3:00:35), and only losing four minutes to the class leader. This was the first failure of its kind that the Ford Australia Ranger Raptor engineers have experienced – a testament to the extreme conditions thrown up by this year’s Finke race and to the capability of the Ranger Raptor.
Driven by Brad Lovell, and navigated by Byam Lovell, the #773 Ranger Raptor was the only vehicle in its class to finish both legs of the 2024 event which pushed man and machine to the limit in out Outback test of performance and endurance.
The back-to-back victory comes after a multi-day back-and-forth battle for the Production 4WD crown. During the run from Alice Springs to Aputula (Finke) the Ranger Raptor set a scorching early pace, overtaking its key rival 55 kilometres into the race after starting three minutes behind the first starter in class.
However, the 2024 Finke Desert Race wasn’t without its challenges, with the Ranger Raptor facing mechanical issues while pushing hard out on the course. Brad and Byam drove the final 130km of the track on day one with broken left-rear suspension, yet still managed to finish the first leg of the event five minutes faster than 2023 with a time of three hours and 35 seconds (3:00:35), and only losing four minutes to the class leader. This was the first failure of its kind that the Ford Australia Ranger Raptor engineers have experienced – a testament to the extreme conditions thrown up by this year’s Finke race and to the capability of the Ranger Raptor.
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MotorTranscript
00:00Game on, it's the prologue, we get one shot at it, and then that'll seed us for the start
00:12of day one, headed down to Pink.
00:22It's crazy because I look up and I see a helicopter in front of us, I'm like, oh my gosh!
00:27We qualified in 5 minutes 59, 77, which is quicker than we went last year, which was
00:52the goal, we wanted to go sub 6 minutes.
00:54They put us in P2, so Lowndes and Silverado went marginally quicker than us.
00:58We're going to be faster in whoops and the more technical stuff, where this is more like
01:02a track, and I hear that Lowndes is actually pretty fast on tracks, kind of a big deal
01:07down here in Australia.
01:08We're pretty excited to hunt them down tomorrow.