There is a coastal town an hour southeast of Bangkok where, once a year, the sound of turbocharged diesel engines drowns out the surf. Bangsaen, a beloved beach resort in Chonburi Province, transforms each July into something that locals have come to call Thailand's Monaco. The streets narrow, the barriers go up, and a city that draws holiday families and street food vendors becomes one of Asia's most ferocious racing arenas.

This weekend, July 4–5, Ford Thailand Racing (FTR) is heading back. And this time, it’s bringing three Ford Ranger V6 race trucks and the combined firepower of three drivers who couldn't be more different from one another.

The stage: a circuit that punishes mistakes

To understand why Bangsaen matters, you first need to understand the series it crowns. The B-Quik Thailand Super Series is now in its 13th season and organised in partnership with the SRO Motorsports Group, the same body that manages GT World Challenge racing globally, is Southeast Asia's premier circuit championship. It draws together FIA GT3 and GT4 machinery, Formula 4, Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, and one uniquely Thai phenomenon: the Thailand Super Pickup category. In a country where pickup trucks outsell passenger cars and the tuning culture runs generations deep, racing a pickup isn't a novelty. It's a national sport.

The Bangsaen Street Circuit is this world's crown jewel, and its 2026 edition marks a landmark 20th anniversary. The 3.7-kilometre FIA Grade 3 circuit runs directly along Bang Saen Beach, through the Laem Thaen headland and around Khao Sam Muk hill, featuring 19 corners with concrete barriers that leave zero room for error.

“At Bangsaen, the road is narrow and you never know what may be waiting ahead,” says FTR driver Thanaphon 'Best' Chucharoenpon.

A Ranger that races for real

The three trucks FTR will field at Bangsaen aren't show cars with sponsor stickers. They are purpose-built racing machines, developed directly by Ford Thailand's engineers and technicians alongside three specialist development partners, each bringing distinct expertise to the build.

“ I'm an old-school driver, I like cars that demand full control, with a manual gearbox and clutch.”

Sandy Stuvik, YK Motorsports

At the heart of all three is the Ford Ranger V6 Single Cab race truck, powered by a heavily race-tuned version of the Ranger's 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel engine. The same engine that produces 184kW in its production form is, in race specification, pushed through a custom MoTeC ECU map, upgraded turbocharger, and a precision cooling system built to survive Thailand's relentless heat. The single-cab body, stripped of anything non-essential, brings weight down dramatically from a stock truck's roughly 2,200 kg. Fully adjustable Öhlins dampers, Wilwood multi-piston racing brakes, and Hankook racing slick tires complete a machine that, in the Super Pickup Class A, regularly produces well over 373kW of power.

Every kilometre run on track feeds real data back to Ford Thailand Manufacturing (FTM) and AutoAlliance Thailand (AAT) engineers. What works at race speed doesn't stay at race speed, it informs the Ranger that buyers take home.

The drivers: three speeds, three stories

One of the most compelling things about FTR's 2026 lineup is how entirely different its three drivers are, in origin, in style, and in the roads that brought them here.

Sandy Stuvik (No. 3, developed by YK Motorsport) is the longest-serving member of the team, having raced with FTR since its founding in 2020. Born in Phuket to a Norwegian father and a Thai mother, the 31-year-old is one of Thailand's most decorated racing drivers; a three-time Thailand Super Series GT3 champion (2019, 2020, 2022) and the first Thai driver ever to compete in GP3, Formula 1's former primary feeder series, where he raced for Trident and Status Grand Prix. He came to pickup racing later than most but has made it unmistakably his own. “I love the raw character of racing pickups,” he says. “I'm an old-school driver, I like cars that demand full control, with a manual gearbox and clutch.”

Thanaphon 'Best' Chucharoenpon(No. 15, developed by Aongdo Motorsport) arrives at FTR as the 2023 Thailand Super Pickup Overall and Class A champion, a title earned the hard way across a career that began in straight-line drag racing. In 2013, Best made international headlines when he drove a 4-cylinder diesel Thai drag truck to a world-record 8.22-second quarter-mile run at the NHRDA World Finals in Texas, beating far larger American V8 machines. That background, explosively fast reactions and surgical clutch control, translates directly to circuit racing. “That skill comes from my drag racing background,” he says. “It helps me make decisive split-second decisions.”

Kantadhee ‘Boom’ Kusiri (No. 18, developed by Aurora Design Dynamics) is the newest face at FTR, but anything but a newcomer to big results. The 33-year-old from Chonburi, whose brother Kantasak is a rival in the series' GT3 class, won the TCR Asia Series championship in 2017 driving for Liqui-Moly Team Engstler, has raced Bentley and Porsche GT3 machinery, and claimed a class win at the prestigious Idemitsu 1500 Super Endurance. He arrived at Round 2 of the 2026 season and won both Class A and Overall. “I actually try to drive as smoothly as possible,” he says with a quiet confidence. “But from the outside, many people see my style as quite aggressive.”

Bangsaen, for Boom, is a homecoming. "I have raced on many circuits in Thailand, and Bangsaen is the one I like most and where I believe I can perform best. I'm from Chonburi and this is my home race."

The pit wall: where Ford engineering meets motorsport

Behind these three drivers is a team of Ford Thailand racing engineers and technicians who do something rare in motorsport: they go to work on Monday with the race data from the weekend and apply it to production vehicle development. The pit wall at Bangsaen is not a separate world from the factory floor. It's an extension of it.

Three development partners, YK Motorsport, Aongdo Motorsport, and Aurora Design Dynamics, each bring their own engineering identity to their respective trucks. YK Motorsport, co-founded by racing drivers "Yo" and "Kat," are as well known in Thailand for their Öhlins suspension expertise as for their wins in endurance racing. The result is three trucks that are related but not identical, each tuned to the philosophy of its driver, and each pushing the ceiling of what the Ford Ranger platform can do.

More than a race team

Seven years of showing up at circuits has built something that goes beyond lap times. Ford Thailand Racing has become a community, one that each race weekend invites customers, employees, and partners to participate. Hot Laps sessions put fans in the passenger seat of an actual race truck, feeling the G-forces that the drivers manage over a full race distance. Meet & Greet events open the pit lane to customers who would otherwise only see the action from the grandstands.

At Bangsaen, where racegoers come to watch racing for free along one of Thailand's most beloved beaches, the Ford Blue wave in the grandstands has become as much a part of the atmosphere as the engines.

The 19 corners are waiting. So is the sea.

Ford Thailand Racing competes in the Thailand Super Pickup category of the B-Quik Thailand Super Series at the Bangsaen Street Circuit, Chonburi, July 4–5, 2026.