You have to go to some length to impress someone who has worked for Formula 1's leading teams, but the Ford NASCAR programme and its development of the 2019 Mustang Cup car has managed it.

"I'd say this is the first time I've ever worked for a large company, it's the first time I've really been outside a race team in the last 20 years of work, and it was a surprise to me," says Tommy Josephs, Ford's hand-picked aerodynamic leader brought in to oversee the Mustang's transition to competition.

"I didn't know what to expect but I remember last February, a few weeks after I started, I went to visit Ford [World] headquarters and I went to the research and innovation centre. It was like one of those movies where you walk into some secret government lab and you see a UFO or a spaceship, some of the things I saw in there with materials and processes and techniques - research that was done that I would never have been able to think of previously.