Joe Foster and Scott Maxwell, driving the No. 55 Hyper Sport Ford Mustang FR500C, won the 2008 Grand-Am KONI Challenge Grand Sport driver and team championship and helped Ford win its second Manufacturers title.

Top-10 finishes in eight of the 10 races was enough for Hyper Sport to take the championship by six points over fellow Mustang competitors JBS Motorsports and nine points over Automatic Racing's BMW M3 entry.

The 2008 season started at Daytona with a second-place finish with Foster, Maxwell and Jeff Courtney taking turns behind the wheel. A 28th-place finish at Lime Rock Park dropped the drivers down in the standings, but the team rebounded with a victory at Maxwell's home track, Mosport International Raceway. After the strong performance north of the border the series headed south to Barber Motorsports Park. After Foster started the race from the pole he turned the car over to Maxwell. With three laps to go a hard charging Maxwell passed JBS Motorsports driver James Gue to win the second race in a row.

Consistency was important in the second half of the season. All five races resulted in top-10 finishes, a fourth place finish at Miller Motorsports Park gave Hyper Sport its first point lead of the season. The points battle came down to the final race of the year at the Bosch Engineering Twin Six Hours at Virginia International Raceway. A fifth-place finish by the Hyper Sport team was the best of the three title contenders, breaking up a close points race.

In the manufacturer battle, Ford, Porsche and BMW each won races over the 10-race season, and at one point the trio was separated by a slim three points. In the end, a 1-2 finish by the Rehagen Racing Ford Mustangs at the Bosch Engineering Twin Six Hours at Virginia International Raceway was enough to catapult Ford from third to first. Ford secured its second manufacturer championship in the KONI Challenge Series, the last championship came in 2005, the debut season of the FR500C Mustang.

“Winning the championship was an amazing thing,” said Foster. “It's something Hyper Sport hasn't done before, and team owner Patrick Dempsey and Rick Skelton, the partners in the team haven't either. I know Patrick, on the set of Grey's Anatomy, was watching online all day. Personally, it's the culmination of a lot of hard work by about 100 people sharing in this.”

For additional FR500C information, visit the Competition Mustang section of the Ford Racing Performance Parts website.