Riding in a Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Laguna Seca Made Me Love Its V8 Even More

The 2025 Ford Mustang Dark Horse makes 500 horsepower and 418 lb-ft of torque, which is to say it’s probably a lot of car for your average driver—including yours truly. Ford has a fleet of Dark Horses that it uses to teach folks how to drive fast at the Ford Performance Racing School. And, of course, to make this auto writer wish he had waited to eat lunch until after a hot lap at Laguna Seca.

During my stay with Lincoln at Monterey Car Week, Ford suggested I take a lap around Laguna in a Mustang Dark Horse. It would have been rude to say no. So, off I went in the most powerful pony car this side of the GTD in the care of one of FP’s precision drivers, and I filmed the lap for your viewing pleasure.

I’ll be the first to admit it looks much slower than it felt. Blame physics and the sensors in modern cameras, but the sound gives away the speed. Watch it again and listen to the growls and the roar of the Dark Horse’s 5.0-liter V8. I know it’s an old hat, but nothing beats the sound of a naturally aspirated engine.

As I walked back to the garages after the lap, all I could think was that it had been over too quickly. My legs were tight from bracing against the firewall of the Mustang. I was basically standing tip-toe in the footwell half the time, as we made our way violently through Laguna Seca.

The two horses that took us out on our laps at Laguna didn’t wear a dark-colored livery but wore bright colors instead. Maybe that’s so that the Ford Performance drivers could see each other more easily as the lead and chase cars traced their lines over the track.

The Mustang’s front end pitched down as we slalomed through the Corkscrew, and its display read 1.42 lateral Gs. I know the video hardly does that number justice, but it felt like the Dark Horse was trying to buck me off the saddle and toss me aside.

I was impressed by how much a lap at the storied track (or many others) is about pushing sideways as much as pushing forward. I can only imagine what Formula Drift drivers must feel, sidewinding like snakes through clouds of smoke.

But the most impressive part of the hot lap was how close the cars got even when we were going flat out. It was seemingly close enough for one Mustang’s snout to touch the other’s tail. The drivers switched lead and chase positions at one point.

At turn five, the front car pulled off to the right and our Mustang sprinted ahead. I was simply too busy guffawing to look in the rearview and check if the cars had stayed as tightly grouped as before. I guess it didn’t matter to me by then.

For a second, I imagined the other car was a competitor that we had overtaken then roared ahead to victory. Maybe that’s as close as I can come to the feeling of passing someone at Laguna Seca, but I’m OK with that. I have less track experience than I’d like, but even if I ever got the wheel time, I suspect that a $60,000-plus car like the Ford Mustang Dark Horse is just a little out of my budget.

Still, I’m glad I got to experience something similar to what my colleague Adam did not long ago at the Miami GP. My lap at Laguna was blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but I wasn’t too worried about that. Come to think of it, I probably didn’t blink once. There was no time.