Chip Ganassi Racing’s current TUDOR United SportsCar Championship program is set for a significant change when the defending Rolex 24 at Daytona winners replace their Ford EcoBoost DP (ABOVE) with a pair of Ford GTs (BELOW) in 2016.

With five Grand-Am Rolex DP championships to their credit between 2004 and 2012, Ganassi’s team has thrived running prototypes, and as CGR managing director Mike Hull told RACER this week, they would like to enter at least one Ford DP next season as a secondary effort.

“We’re working on next year to have a continuation of that project,” Hull said. “First of all, we’d like to defend the fact that we won the 24-hour race with the DP car this year. That would be great to do, no matter what. If we can work in that direction at the same time work on having a continuation of the project into next year – it would be separate entirely from the GT project – we would entertain doing it. At this point we don’t have anything done in that area, so we’re not able to say this is exactly what we’re going to do.”

At present, the Ford DP effort is a full factory program with support from the Blue Oval. Asked if the team would consider transitioning its TUDOR Championship Prototype effort into a client-based project, Hull says paying customers could be the key to keeping the No. 01 car on track in 2016. The suggestion of seeking a partner team to run the car on their behalf was also received in a positive manner.

“I think we’d look at it, for sure,” he confirmed. “We have a lot of history and a lot of wins with the program, and if that was valued by the right individuals who wanted to be part of the program, wanted to drive and maintain the high level of performance, I think that’s something we would seriously consider.”

Despite CGR’s desire to keep its Prototype effort moving forward, Hull also clarified the team’s top priority for next year and beyond in IMSA.

“The challenge that we have for this coming year, for 2015, is to be properly ready and fully manned to run two cars in the GT program,” he said. “It’s a full factory program with Ford, and that requires the full Ganassi effort with the best people and the best directional push internally from our race team like we always do with those kinds of projects.

“So I would say that for us is what takes the emphasis, and it will remain our emphasis, but if we can keep the DP project intact without it impacting the GT project, it’s definitely an area of interest.”