After three rounds of the Supercars Championship, Ford fans must feel totally dismayed at the lack of results for the blue oval brand as the rival Chevrolet Camaro continues to dominate.
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The new Gen 3 regulations were supposed to create parity between the brands but so far it's almost been a whitewash with the Camaro winning eight of the nine races as the series heads to Symmons Plains this weekend.
It looks even worse when you take into account that the solitary win for the Mustang was in fact by default when third-placed Cam Waters was elevated to the top spot when the Camaros of Shane Van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney were disqualified from the first race at Newcastle.
The best-placed Mustang driver in the championship is Chaz Mostert in second place due to consistent top-six results but without threatening for a win.
Cam Waters is sixth and David Reynolds eighth and so there are only three Mustangs in the top 10.
The 25-car field is made up of 14 Camaros and 11 Mustangs and, even allowing for the three-car difference in numbers in the overall points tally, Camaro drivers have amassed 6296 points to the Mustang drivers' 4562.
Delve further into the results and the Camaro has seven pole positions to Mustang's two and in terms of front-row starts it's Camaro 12 to Mustang six.
Of the 27 podium positions, Camaro has recorded eight first places, seven seconds and six thirds while the Mustang has a solitary first, two seconds and three thirds.
In the all-important teams championship, the Penrite team of Reynolds and Matt Payne are the leading Mustangs in third but already 459 points behind the leading Erebus Camaro team of Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown.
Championship leader Kostecki has been the standout driver so far having recorded two firsts, three seconds and three thirds with sixth place in race two in the opening-round in Newcastle his worst result.
Defending champion Van Gisbergen is third but would have been on top without his disqualification in Newcastle costing him 150 points and topped off by a poor 12th place in the last race in Perth.
The biggest disappointment has been the lack of performance by the once all-conquering Dick Johnson Shell Racing team with drivers Will Davison languishing back in ninth and the much-vaunted Anton De Pasquale in 19th.
Pasquale finished second last year and Davison fourth but so far this year Davison's best results have been two sixths and Pasquale a fifth.
Both are better than that with Davison scoring 22 race wins, 73 podiums and 28 pole positions from more than 500 race starts and De Pasquale eight wins, 30 podiums and 16 pole positions from 160 starts.
Toss in Mostert with 21 wins, 83 podiums and 22 pole positions from 303 starts, Waters with eight wins, 28 podiums and 16 pole positions from 184, James Courtney with 15 wins, 72 podiums and 10 pole positions from 527 plus Reynolds with seven wins, 38 podiums and 12 pole positions from 389 and it would be unfair to say the Mustang drivers are a bunch of duds.
Apart from the engines and the bodywork the two brands are identical in every respect with the Supercars technical gurus telling us there is no difference in the power output of the two engines or the aero package for each.
The Chevrolet powerplant in the Camaro is an antiquated single-camshaft two-valve-per-cylinder engine of 5.7 litres while the Ford engine is a quad camshaft four-valve-per-cylinder unit with a capacity of 5.4 litres.
The propellor heads that sit staring at squiggly lines on a computer screen while engines are revved to within an inch of their lives on a dynamometer tell us changes made have provided equal performance criteria.
Equally the boffins claim there is no difference in the aero package of each so the question remains: why is there such a huge disparity in the results after just a quarter of the championship?
Gen 3 had a difficult gestation period caused in part by COVID and compounded by supply issues with parts so the introduction of the cars was 12 months late.
It was all very much last minute with teams scrambling just to make the grid at Newcastle but it was the same for every team so that should not be trotted out as an excuse for the dismal efforts of the Mustang runners.
The Camaro has the stronger driver line-up but not to the extent reflected in the results to date.
Symmons Plains has the shortest lap time in the championship and while qualifying is important at every round it is even more critical at this 2.4 kilometre circuit with the entire field likely to be covered by less than a second, subject to weather.
