Blackforest Motorsports has announced that it will return to GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series competition, campaigning a Ford Mustang GT in next year’s GT Class championship. The Rolex Series GT Class is expected to be the most competitive in series history and the Ford Mustang GT will make an exciting new addition to the category.

TPN/Blackforest Motorsports is now solely owned by Tom Nastasi following the retirement of long time team leader Brian Nott in 2009. The Mustang entry marks a return to Rolex Series competition for the Deland, Florida-based organization, which has a solid record of racing the Ford Mustang in GRAND-AM competition.

The team brought Ford Racing a Cinderella debut with the Mustang FR500C’s season-opening victory at Daytona International Speedway in 2005 and also played a critical role in securing the Manufacturer Championship for Ford that year.

The team built and entered a GT-Class Mustang Cobra in the 2007 24 Hours of Daytona. The car’s chassis was built by Crawford Race Cars of Denver, NC, and was mated to a Roush/Yates-sourced 5-liter V8 engine. The #15 Cobra was retired after 224 laps due to repeated gearbox problems.

“This project has been a long time in development, and I think that with the new Ford Mustang GT, we are on the same page with Ford Racing in terms of what the best package for the Rolex Series is,” explained Nastasi, alluding to some friction that developed over use of the Crawford-built car instead of Ford Racing’s FR500GT Mustang. In the end, neither car was particularly successful.

Most recently, Nastasi and the Blackforest team entered a Borla-sponsored Dodge Challenger in the season-ending Continental Tire Series race at Miller Motorsports Park. The GS-class car finished 11th, just 22 seconds behind the leader, co-driven by Ian James. James will rejoin Nastasi in the #11 Mustang for the 2011 Rolex GT Series.

“We are very excited to see the Ford Mustang competing in the Rolex Sports Car Series GT Class,” said Jamie Allison, director, Ford North America Motorsports. “TPN/Blackforest Motorsports has a long and successful history racing the Ford Mustang and we are confident that the Mustang GT will only add to that tradition.”

The car will be previewed next week during Test Days at Virginia International Raceway. Working together, Ford Racing and Blackforest Motorsports have proven to be a winning combination in the past. Their return to the Rolex Series should be a significant concern to the established players there.