Anthony Magagnoli entered one SCCA® RallyCross® last year, and he won. He didn’t just win his class, though, he nearly won the event overall – and the next thing you know, Ford’s CEO is congratulating him on a job well done. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.
A past Detroit Region member, Magagnoli is a Ford engineer, road racer, and driver coach whose racing resume includes Pirelli World Challenge and the SCCA Pro Racing-sanctioned Trans Am Series. Magagnoli also decided to take one of his company’s stock Ford Mustang Mach-E Rallys to a RallyCross to see how the car would perform.
“After meeting a Mustang Mach-E owner … who suggested that the Mach-E Rally was nothing more than a sticker and tire package, I realized we needed to show people exactly how capable this car really is,” Magagnoli explained on his LinkedIn page. “While I’ve driven hundreds of dirt-slewing miles on our in-house course at Michigan Proving Grounds, which was developed by my counterpart and active RallyCrosser, Christopher Berchin, we had to prove that to our customers as well. The racer in me proposed running in a Detroit Region Sports Car Club of America RallyCross to demonstrate how exciting this car is. Thankfully, the internal team was fully supportive.”
During a late October Detroit Region RallyCross, 64 drivers showed up at Auto City Speedway in Clio, MI, for a day of fun competition. Magagnoli’s class consisted of seven cars, one of which was a representative from another manufacturer driving the same Lexus RC350 that had won a RallyCross National Championship in 2021. Being that Magagnoli’s Mach-E is a modern all-wheel-drive vehicle and he’s an accomplished driver, it was no surprise that he could keep pace with his class – the shock came when looking closer at the results.
With an overall time of 848.401, Magagnoli earned a class win by 22.2sec over the Lexus. While it’s hard to compare overall class-to-class run times at a RallyCross due to the fact that the course might have been adjusted between classes, it’s notable that the only person who laid down a faster overall time than Magagnoli was Modified All Wheel Drive (MA) driver Adam David in a hot-rodded Subaru Forester.
Diving deeper, David completed his eight runs clean while the results indicate that Magagnoli tagged 11 cones overall. Furthermore, Magagnoli’s third run of the day, a 101.946, was also FTD, beating David’s fastest single-lap run by 1.412sec.
While this was Magagnoli’s first SCCA RallyCross, he didn’t go into the competition blind. “Before I competed, I attended an event as a spectator and saw the high level of preparation that went into some of the cars, some of which were on dedicated rally tires,” he explained. “On top of that, the National Championship-winning car in our Stock AWD class runs in our Region. So, to have come out on top on debut, beating not only a top-level car in class, but also setting the fastest lap among ALL competitors, was a literal dream come true!”
Magagnoli’s performance wasn’t just noticed online by Mach-E enthusiasts, the CEO of Ford also got involved in the celebration.
“The Mustang Mach-E Rally made its SCCA RallyCross debut, won the event AND set the fastest lap time,” Ford CEO Jim Farley wrote on LinkedIn. “All with a Ford engineer behind the wheel. Gotta love this enthusiasm for our products! Our engineers are willing to prove they make the best vehicles, even if they have to race them themselves. Nice work, Anthony, Christopher Berchin and everyone that helped make this possible. I know you had a blast on the course showing what the Mustang Mach-E Rally is capable of!”
Check out an in-car view of Magagnoli’s fastest run of the day:
Ford released the Rally edition of the Mustang Mach-E in 2023, stating that the 4,900 lb, all-wheel-drive EV with 480 hp and 650+ lb-ft of torque had drive modes specifically tuned for performance driving on gravel and dirt.
What does this say about EVs in RallyCross? Keeping in mind that this was a single Regional event, it’s hard to read anything into the results – but that doesn’t make this story any less neat.
Photo courtesy Anthony Magagnoli/Motor Authority
