This year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed has a variety of interesting attractions, ranging from the almost production-ready Honda Prelude to the outlandishly aerodynamic Subaru WRX Project Midnight. But while many of the vehicles making their appearance in Southern England skew toward on-road performance, Ford is reminding attendees that dirt and mud have their place too. Enter the Raptor T1+, a hard-core racer destined for the Dakar Rally.
Unlike other vehicles wearing the Raptor badge, Ford’s latest racer in the T1+ rally raid class isn’t based on a production offering. The off-roader features a steel space frame and carbon fiber body panels, with a double-wishbone independent suspension at all four corners. Fox Racing supplied the Raptor T1+’s coilover, external-bypass dampers and remote reservoirs, with total suspension travel sitting at 13.8 inches and minimum ground clearance at 15.7 inches. Of note, Fox Racing also provides suspension bits for the F-150, Bronco, and Ranger Raptors, albeit in softer-core form.
Powering the Ford Raptor T1+ is a 5.0-liter V8 based on the Coyote engine architecture, although there’s a dry-sump oil system to ensure adequate lubrication in extreme high-g conditions. The manufacturer hasn’t copped to power levels just yet.
The Raptor T1+ is a successor to the Ranger T1+, Ford Racing’s contender in the 2024 Dakar Rally. The team approached its first entry into the event as a finish-and-learn experience, which it did with both Rangers completing the event. As with its predecessor, Ford Racing engineered the Raptor T1+ in collaboration with M-Sport Ltd, with Red Bull serving as another team partner. The Ranger-based off-roader had a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 producing 402 horsepower, the maximum for rally raid’s T1+ class.
Ford Racing will field a total of four Raptor T1+ vehicles, with one of them driven by Ranger T1+ veteran Nani Roma and another by racing legend Carlos Sainz Sr. Shortly after the Goodwood debut, the Raptor T1+ will head to the 2024 Baja Hungary taking place from August 8-10, then to the 2024 Rallye du Maroc from October 4-11. The final stop in the rally raid tour will be the fearsome Dakar, held from January 4-17 in Saudi Arabia.
