Photos courtesy of Ford

Last week we brought you news of the new Shelby GT350R-C, and its debut at the IMSA Watkins Glen race over the weekend. It looks like the R-C is is picking up where Mustangs of the past left off. Ever since the first Shelby Mustangs rolled out of Shelby American’s shop, they’ve been a threat at every race they’ve entered. The R-C has brought back that same fight.

At Watkins Glen, Multimatic Motorsports driver Scott Maxwell qualified the number 15 car on the pole with a 2-minute, 1.358 second lap, ahead of the other 14 cars in attendance for the 2015 IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar race. The Multimatic team had the car on point for qualifying and Maxwell was able to put together the solid lap for the pole.

The GT350R-C will be raced at the remaining IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge events the rest of this year.

“For me, it’s more rewarding for everyone at Ford and Multimatic who have put in so many hours into development of this car, both on and off the track,” Maxwell said. “It’s giving something back. Honestly, we (as drivers) have the best job and the easiest job. We jump in the car and benefit from all their hard work. Once in a while it’s nice to earn the pole and let them know all their hard work paid off.”

Unfortunately for the teams, race day also brought with it rain, and lots of it. To he point where the race was black-flagged, then ended under caution. The teams didn’t have any experience in these cars under those conditions so the drivers found themselves in more of a test-mode to see what they could, and couldn’t do with the cars in the rain. We’re sure the 500 horsepower flat-plane crank engine in the R-C wanted to turn the car around coming out of the corners, so drivers had to tip-toe the cars around the track until they found a comfort level.

The 15 car was also penalized for jumping a restart, and had to do a drive through the pits as a consequence, which backed them up in the field. Regardless, a pole, a fourth and a seventh in the car’s very first race, and one in less-than-ideal conditions, we think the teams will take that all day, and get ’em next time.