When Ford unveiled the second-generation GT at the 2015 North American International Auto Show, the company simultaneously announced its intention to return to top-level GT racing. The race program and road car were designed as a single project: the GT's aerodynamic teardrop profile and carbon fiber monocoque were shaped first around the demands of endurance racing, with the twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6 engine and pushrod suspension chosen partly for the packaging freedom they gave engineers to maximize downforce. The GT was assembled at Multimatic's low-volume facility in Markham, Ontario, and Multimatic was also the technical partner on the racing effort alongside Ford Performance.
The factory effort was structured as Ford Chip Ganassi Racing, which ran four LM GTE-Pro cars in total: two competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship and two entered in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in the GTLM class.
The Ford GT GTE made its competition debut at the 2016 24 Hours of Daytona on January 30–31, where it finished seventh and ninth in the GTLM class. The car required the first months of the season for the team to build reliability and pace.
The program reached its defining moment on June 19, 2016. At the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the #68 Ford GT driven by Ford Chip Ganassi Racing took victory in the LM GTE-Pro class. The win came exactly fifty years after Ford's landmark 1966 victory with the GT40, and the anniversary timing had been a deliberate goal of the program from inception. The result validated the decision to build the road car and race car as a single integrated project.
Later in 2016, the Ford GT GTE demonstrated consistent form in the FIA WEC's Asian rounds: at both the 6 Hours of Fuji and the 6 Hours of Shanghai, both Ford GTs finished 1–2, with the #67 car winning each race and the #66 finishing second.
The factory effort continued for three additional seasons. In the 2017 WEC opening round at Silverstone, the #67 Ford GT took victory. At the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans — held fifty years after Ford's second consecutive Le Mans win in 1967 — the #67 Ford GT finished as runner-up in the GTE-Pro class, another anniversary milestone the program deliberately pursued.
Ford Chip Ganassi Racing maintained the dual campaign in WEC and IMSA through the 2018–19 WEC superseason and the 2019 WeatherTech season. At the conclusion of the 2019 season, Ganassi announced the end of the factory program after four years of competition.
The GTE-spec Ford GT retained the road car's fundamental architecture: a carbon fiber monocoque with aluminum front and rear subframes, the 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6, and the distinctive flying buttress rear bodywork that channeled air over the rear spoiler. The active rear wing of the road car was adapted for racing use, adjusting according to cornering and braking demands. Pushrod suspension at both axles moved the primary suspension components inboard to free packaging space for the aerodynamic bodywork elements at the corners of the car.
The production road car was homologated alongside the race car; FIA GTE rules require that a road-legal version of the competing car exist, and the road GT's design was shaped by that requirement from the outset rather than adapted afterward.
The Ford GT GTE program is significant in modern GT racing for the directness of its Le Mans anniversary ambition and for the degree of integration between the road car and the race car programs. The 2016 class win at Le Mans achieved the stated goal of the entire Ford GT project, and the broader competitive record across WEC and IMSA across four seasons demonstrated the program's underlying pace beyond the anniversary milestone. Ford elected to end factory GTE participation after 2019, but the car stands as one of the more purposefully conceived factory GT efforts of its era.