The team will travel to Texas Motor Speedway for a 24-hour sportscar event on June 19-20, to Iowa Speedway’s road course for another 24-hour event on June 26-27, and to the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit on August 28-29 for the 24 Hours of Oklahoma.

Team drivers will include Stephen Dale, Joseph Smith and Stephen Cox. Sopwith will compete in an entry-level, production-based road racing class where the emphasis is on team strategy, endurance, and enjoyment. “Instead of always striving to move up to higher forms of racing, I thought it would be fun to move down for a change,” said Trophy Truck pilot and two-time road racing champion Stephen Cox. “I have a passion for old-fashioned endurance racing. This isn’t about sponsors or television, it’s just about having fun and doing something we love.” The team will field a race-prepared Ford Thunderbird equipped a 200+ horsepower, 4.6 liter modular V-8 engine.

Sopwith is also expected to enter additional long-distance races this season at Indiana’s Putnam Park, Firebird Raceway in Phoenix, and several other events. Depending on the results, the team may switch cars in later races. “It’s a production class, but there’s no engine formula,” Cox continued. “So it’s going to be hard to tell what’s more competitive… high-revving 4 cylinders that get better mileage, or the faster V8 engines. We’ll just wait and see. We’ve also got a 4-cylinder Honda CRX and a 6-cylinder Nissan 260z completely race-ready, but we’re committed to doing the first three events in the Thunderbird. Ford did pretty well in NASCAR with T-birds, and we think it will be pretty competitive.”

Race results will be posted first on Sopwith’s Facebook page immediately following the June 19-20 race at Texas Motor Speedway.