After years of speculation about whether Ford’s new S650 Mustang could even be tuned, HP Tuners unlocked the door. Hot on the heels of that release, Palm Beach Dyno tuned Steeda’s HPDE S650, known as the White Stallion. After dyno testing, they headed to the racetrack to validate its performance.

By testing it under race conditions at Homestead, we’re ensuring it’s not just fast, it’s reliable, balanced, and track-proven… — Glen Vitale, Steeda

Over the weekend, Steeda took its 2024 Mustang GT development car to Homestead-Miami Speedway to test the fresh calibration. The track session marked the first time an S650 was tuned and validated under real-world driving conditions, made more challenging by the Florida heat and humidity.

“The corners have always been our strength; now we’re unlocking the power to match,” Glen Vitale, Vice President of Steeda, said. “And by testing it under race conditions at Homestead, we’re ensuring it’s not just fast, it’s reliable, balanced, and track-proven.”

Rather than chasing lap times, Steeda focused on how the calibration performed across a full day of hard lapping in a high-performance driving environment. Their 2024 Mustang GT, nicknamed White Stallion, is already honed for serious corner carving, but this was its first outing with the aftermarket performance calibration.

Trouble-Free Testing

The early results are promising. The tune added 28 horsepower to the tally of the Gen 4 Coyote-powered GT, which was already upgraded with headers and the company’s cold-air intake. More importantly, it held up under race-level stress without throwing codes or triggering torque limiters, which commonly plague early calibration attempts on new platforms.

“I’m extremely pleased with how the track session went,” Ken Bjonnes, of Palm Beach Dyno, enthused. “With a new platform like the S650, we usually spend most of the day chasing torque limits, wrench lights, and calibration headaches. But this time, the only issue we had was too much horsepower, which is the kind of problem we like to have.”

Tuning the S650 wasn’t a given. As we reported in September of 2022, Ford engineers said that the car’s architecture was designed to thwart aftermarket tuners who wanted to read and overwrite the factory code. That added layer of protection made third-party tuning impossible until recently, when HP Tuners cracked the code. Steeda quickly partnered with Palm Beach Dyno to further the development of Gen 4 Coyote-powered Mustang calibrations.

Set For The Strip

Though the track session was focused on reliability and drivability, Steeda says the performance gains will only increase with supporting mods. And while White Stallion represents the road course side of the program, Steeda’s drag team is already preparing its S650 Silver Bullet for straight-line testing with the same calibration.

That car, led by Steeda’s Director of Engineering Scott Boda, who is also the company’s in-house drag-strip hotshoe, aims to push the envelope on the 1,320.

At Homestead-Miami Raceway, the PBD-tuned Steeda HPDE S650 thrived on the road course without triggering torque limits or fault codes. With the tune validated on the road course, Steeda’s drag team will now prepare the Silver Bullet S650 to test the calibration in straight-line conditions. (Photo Credit: Steeda)

“As excited as we are about the dyno gains, that’s only part of the story,” Glen Vitale, Vice President of Steeda, said. “What we learn on the track — throttle response in the corners and power delivery through the gears — can’t be replicated on the dyno. The goal is to perfect this tune for real drivers on real roads, and there’s no substitute for track testing when it comes to refining performance.”

For now, Steeda is taking a measured approach, rather than rushing its tuned packages to market. Instead, the company plans to continue refining the calibration through both road course and drag strip testing to ensure it delivers the kind of balanced, dependable performance.