Ford Motor Company is rebranding its motorsports program to Ford Racing.

The rebrand and new logo were announced Thursday in a letter to employees by Will Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford.

The motorsports arm of the company had previously been called Ford Performance. The company, noted global director Mark Rushbrook, was founded on racing when Henry Ford in 1901 won a race in a car called "Sweepstakes" that catapulted him to form Ford Motor Company two years later.

"This is so much more than a simple name change. This is the reintroduction of our racing brand and signals a completely new way of thinking about the business, brand, and products that our racing efforts bring to life," Will Ford wrote.

The new logo consists of the stylized Ford in white lettering inside a solid blue oval, with the capitalized word RACING in a bold blue under the oval.

Will Ford said the rebranding will help link the manufacturer's road and race operations while allowing the development of on- and off-road performance production vehicles, as well as racing vehicles.

"Under one global leader, our super-talented engineers, designers and aerodynamicists will find innovative solutions for the track and bring them to our road products - and vice versa," Will Ford wrote. "This dedication extends beyond the paved track; the lessons learned in grueling desert races directly inform the engineering of our performance off-road vehicles like the F-150 Raptor.

"All this is being done to bring the best products, technologies, and experiences to our customers."

The first Ford Racing production vehicle will make its debut in January at Ford's season launch, but the logo and name change implementation will begin immediately. It will be on racing vehicles in January at Dakar and Daytona.

"Ford Racing will continue to compete at the highest levels of motorsports," Will Ford wrote. "The Blue Oval will be in front of a global audience like never before, at venues as diverse as F1, Dakar, Le Mans, Bathurst and Daytona. And we are going in with the same goal we always have at Ford... to win them all. After all, we are America's race team!"

Rushbrook said the rebrand was vital in linking personal and performance cars to racing vehicles.

"The very core of our company is to have these very passionate products that we can sell to our customers to park in their garage or their driveway or on the street in front of their house that are truly born out of racing," Rushbrook said. "Everything we are learning in racing ... we are truly taking that into the products. We're in the same building between the motorsports team and the Ford Performance production vehicle team. We're now one team that is working on motorsports and infusing that into our road cars and trucks."

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing