Our 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse Came With Free Racing School

• The Mustang Dark Horse we purchased for our One-Year Road Test fleet came with a day at the Ford Performance Racing School. 
• Instruction takes place at Charlotte Motor Speedway and includes full laps of the Roval.
• You don't have to be the owner to attend, but the offer expires one year after purchase.

Starting with the basics

The format for the Dark Horse driving school was similar to other driving schools I've been to. The day started at 8 a.m. with classroom instruction at the Ford Performance Racing School that the company runs out of Charlotte Motor Speedway. The classroom section goes over a lot of the fundamentals about car control and how a car behaves when you accelerate, brake and turn. None of it is super advanced because this course is meant for drivers of all experience levels (drivers as young as 16 can attend), though Ford does offer more in-depth courses at this school. 

After the classroom section, the group — fewer than 20 drivers in all — put on fire suits, full-face helmets and HANS devices and went outside to check out our cars. All the drivers got their own vehicle, with their choice of transmission selected ahead of time. You're not limited either. The Dark Horse that Edmunds owns is a 10-speed automatic, but I opted for the manual for driving school. 

I was also lucky enough to score a car the same Grabber Blue color as the car that Edmunds owns. Not all the other drivers were as lucky. The cars were nearly stock. The rear seats had been removed and replaced with a partial cage. The cars were also fitted with radios and four-point racing harnesses. The school also runs Michelin tires on the cars (rather than Pirelli rubber like the Edmunds car) — they're better in wet weather and classes here run rain or shine.

They were cones!

After jumping in the cars, we moved on to some exercises in the parking lot outside of the speedway itself. Ford set up an autocross course for us to drive and set times. It included a relatively long straight ... long enough to get up to fourth gear in my manual-equipped car. This was followed by a big turn and then a slalom to weave through. At the end, the goal was to stop in a box, with time penalties for hitting cones or stopping outside of the box. I went home with a small trophy and a gift certificate for posting the day's fastest time, so there is a little competition built in. 

After the autocross, the group moved over to a small oval that had been sprayed down with a water truck. The goal was to use the Dark Horse's drift brake. What looks like a mechanical handbrake is actually an electronic switch. It's programmed to help initiate drifts and slides by overriding the stability control system and locking up the rear brakes. While it effectively works the same as a regular handbrake in that it locks up the rear wheels by only applying brake pressure to the rear, it uses regular rear brake calipers rather than the parking brake to lock the rear tires. 

It's easy to use. Put the car in Track mode and activate the drift brake in the infotainment system. This switches the function of the handbrake from a parking brake to the drift brake. Initiating a drift in a rear-wheel-drive car on a premoistened surface is not hard, but it still makes you feel like a hero when you get a slide right. Get up to speed, initiate the turn, pull the handbrake, and then apply some gas. 

Roving the Roval

Lunch followed the drift brake session, during which the school turned on Ford v Ferrari for the class. (Fun fact: Part of the movie was filmed at the same track that Edmunds uses for testing.) We also got a rundown of the afternoon session, which was spent entirely on a configuration of the so-called Roval, the part road course, part oval configuration of Charlotte Motor Speedway. It included more turns than the NASCAR layout, though we did get up on the banking. 

The sessions were all lead-follow, with one instructor in the lead position and three students following the instructor's line behind. Every lap, the students swap positions so everyone gets a chance to follow the instructor's line. It's a similar format to many media events I've attended, and the small groups mean no one lags too far behind. There also seemed to be an effort to group drivers based on how they performed in the morning's autocross session, so drivers of similar comfort levels were bunched together. 

I've driven on a lot of circuits over the years, but few things make me feel like a kid again like ripping through gears on a real NASCAR speedway. The Dark Horse feels at home on a big track like this. The Dark Horse is a big car. On our scales, a manual-equipped car like I was driving in Charlotte weighed in at 3,961 pounds. The 10-speed automatic makes the car Edmunds owns even heavier; it tips the scales at 4,016 pounds. But hey, NASCAR NextGen cup cars aren't exactly lightweights. 

The Roval is a lot of fun. It's wide and forgiving, but it rewards when you string the whole thing together. The infield road course really shows off what the Dark Horse is capable of, especially one equipped with the optional handling package. It includes wider wheels with larger and more aggressive performance tires, magnetic dampers, additional aero and a few other performance enhancements. If you plan to bring your car to the track, I highly recommend it.

Use it or lose it

Ford isn't the only automaker to offer something like this. New BMW M cars with the optional M Driver's package come with a similar driving school, though BMW's doesn't include laps on a real NASCAR speedway. Either way, it's a cool thing to offer, especially given how fast and capable modern sports cars are. 

One of the coolest parts of the whole experience is learning how to drive a car that you own on a real track without having to worry about tires, brakes or other consumables. Track days are fun and can be affordable, but the wear and tear on your vehicle adds up. How often do you want to practice using the drift brake with your own car? We've already had to replace the tires on our Dark Horse after one series of U-Drags races (around $3,000 for a set of Pirelli Trofeo RS tires) and, given how we drive the car, I'm confident we'll have to purchase another set within the next few months.