Ford tasked the Drivetribe team—Richard Hammond, Mike Fernie, and Izzy Hammond—with an unusual job: road-tripping three new V-8 Mustangs across France. They drove a GT, a Dark Horse, and the undisputed star of the show: the wild, race-bred new Mustang GTD.

Richard Hammond immediately explained what makes the GTD so different from other supercars that are based on race cars.

“They took a race car, and the only thing they threw away was the rulebook, and they said to the engineers, ‘Go crazy. What would you like to build?'” he enthused.

This process resulted in an 815-horsepower beast with a 5.2-liter supercharged V8, a rear-mounted transaxle for perfect 50/50 weight distribution, and a carbon fiber propshaft. The most shocking feature, however, is inside the cabin, where the designers completely removed the rear seats to make way for the supercar’s advanced suspension.

On the road trip portion of the journey, the elder Hammond made a surprising discovery about the car’s character. After taking a detour to explore an old, abandoned circuit near Reims, he reflected on the GTD’s unexpected comfort.

“I was fully expecting this thing to be a barely containable, unfathomably uncomfortable beast on the road. Nope,” he said, impressed by the compliance of the race-bred suspension. The incredible engineering of the new Mustang GTD allowed it to be a comfortable road-tripper, not just a track weapon.

Arriving early at the Circuit de la Bresse for the delivery, the team couldn’t resist the opportunity to unleash the cars on a proper race track. Hammond noted the GTD already held the record as the fastest American car ever to lap the Nürburgring, setting high expectations for its performance.

“I’m not playing a computer game. I’m driving a car, a proper mechanical analog car, and it’s epic,” he concluded.

It was the ultimate compliment, defining the GTD not as a digital hypercar, but as a true, soulful driver’s machine that relished being driven hard, just as a Mustang should.