Rick Kelly’s first Ford revealed for 2020 season

Kelly Racing has unveiled its second Ford Mustang for the 2020 Supercars season with the covers coming off Rick Kelly’s entry this morning.

After fronting the Nissan Altima programme from 2013 to 2019, the Melbourne-based squad has moved over to the Blue Oval for their 2020 campaign, taking the number of Mustangs on the grid up to eight.

With Castrol staying on as Rick Kelly’s main backer, the car was revealed at Federation Square in the Victorian capital, having built up a fan base with constant social media updates across the 16-week-long build period of the car.

Kelly, the 2006 series champion, says it was a big team effort to move from the Altima to Mustang and it that it was good to see new fans getting behind the team ahead of its first year racing Fords.

“Today we’ve taken the covers off my brand-new Castrol Racing Mustang in Melbourne and it’s been really great to involve the fans who have supported us throughout the entire racing journey and now the new fans that have come on board for the 2020 season with the Mustang,” he said.

“We really appreciate everyone’s support today and over the last few months, this hasn’t been an easy job as anyone could imagine but I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved.

“It was a team effort to get the car and the engine done in a sixteen week period, the guys back at the factory have worked around the clock and really dug deep to deliver this car with the support too of our technical partners, the main one being Castrol.

“Castrol have been a supporter of mine for most of my career and the team’s since we began in 2009. We’re now commencing our third year having them as the major partner on my car and it’s going to be an extremely exciting year working together.

“The Castrol relationship has been extremely valuable particularly with the engine development stuff we’ve been working on where it’s ultra-important that we have the utmost consistency with everything when testing parts for performance and reliability so to have a product and a support team that we can rely on has been extremely beneficial.

“I can’t wait to hit the track in the Castrol Mustang, I think it looks great, certainly looks fast and really happy with what we’ve achieved so far with an exciting season ahead.”

Kelly and team-mate Andre Heimgartner will get the chance to shake down their new entries at the pre-season test day at The Bend Motorsport Park on February 18, just two days before the season-opening Adelaide 500 gets underway.