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You are here: Home | News, Events & Advice | Project Aero: the 950kg, 400bhp Fiesta ST time attack car built by Pumaspeed
Project Aero: the 950kg, 400bhp Fiesta ST time attack car built by Pumaspeed
400bhp. 950kg. Half a tonne of downforce. Meet Project Aero.
It started in 2023 as a sorry-looking Mk8 Fiesta ST and a plan scribbled on a whiteboard. Three years on it is the fastest thing Pumaspeed has ever built: a one-of-one, flat-floored, sequential-gearbox time attack Fiesta that is pulling clear of every other two-wheel-drive Fiesta on a circuit. This is the full story.
Project Aero outside the Pumaspeed workshop at 178 Batley Road, Wakefield. Splitter, vented bonnet, rear wing and a full flat floor: every panel is doing a job.
Why build it at all?
Pumaspeed has always developed its parts on its own cars. The orange Mk8 did more than thirty track days and three trips to Spa on the Stage 3 hardware customers buy every week. The white Mk8 took the same 1.6 EcoBoost past 500bhp on an SCS Delta ECU. Project Aero asked the next question: what happens when you stop treating a Fiesta as a hot hatch with bolt-ons, and build it from the shell up as a proper time attack car, with the aerodynamics doing as much of the work as the engine?
The brief, written down in August 2023 when the car arrived, was clear: a 1.6 EcoBoost making around 400bhp, a kerb weight under 1,000kg with 950kg the target, a full flat floor, a Quaife sequential gearbox, a stand-alone ECU with a digital dash, and a side-exit exhaust. Every one of those boxes has since been ticked.
Day one, and a year later. Left: the donor car as it turned up in August 2023. Right: September 2024, back from fabrication and paint, waiting for its wrap.
The shell: cage, carbon and a driver sat where he should be
The car was stripped to a bare shell and sent to Parkin Racing Developments for the structural work. An FIA-specification roll cage went in, and the seat rails and steering column were moved rearwards so the driver sits further back in the car for better weight distribution and a proper racing driving position. The doors and boot lid were replaced with carbon-fibre items, which together with the stripped interior is how a car that left the factory at around 1,260kg now weighs 950kg, and has been on the scales at 940kg with the driver in it.
Inside there is a Tillett carbon seat on TRS six-point harnesses, a quick-release steering wheel carrying the Ecumaster button module, and a sequential lever where the gearstick used to be. The signature Pumaspeed livery was applied by WRPD Motors, the third Pumaspeed car they have wrapped.
Cage, Tillett seat and TRS harnesses, and the Ecumaster wheel with its dash and button module. Nothing in here that does not need to be.
Engine, gearbox and electronics
The engine is still the 1.6 EcoBoost that every Mk8 Fiesta ST customer knows, built and turbocharged by Pumaspeed to make 400bhp on a calibration written in-house. It is the same family of hardware as our Stage packages, developed at the extreme end so that what goes into customer kits has already been proven somewhere far harsher than the road.
Behind it sits a Quaife six-speed sequential gearbox, which is why the car makes the noise it does on upshifts and why lap times tumbled once the driver no longer had to lift. The whole car runs on an Ecumaster ecosystem: ECU, power management, dash and steering-wheel controls, wired on a motorsport loom built by Racing Circuits. Race geometry was set by Joey's Speedshop, and during the 2025 season the suspension moved to three-way adjustable damping on slick tyres.
Left: the 400bhp 1.6 EcoBoost. Right: AP Racing calipers behind lightweight wheels and slicks; stopping a 950kg car is the easy bit.
The aero: where the name comes from
Most "aero" on modified road cars is decoration. Project Aero's package was developed to produce real, positive downforce, and the figure the car runs to is around 500kg at speed. The front splitter feeds a full flat floor that runs the length of the car, the vented bonnet lets hot air out of the engine bay instead of trapping it under the car, and the rear wing is mounted high enough to work in clean air. The side-exit exhaust is part of the same thinking: it keeps the underside flat and the heat away from the floor.
On a 950kg car, half a tonne of downforce changes everything. Corner speeds that would have a standard Fiesta on its door handles become routine, braking points move later, and the car is stable in a way a road hatchback simply cannot be. It is the single biggest reason Project Aero is quicker than any other two-wheel-drive Fiesta we have seen on track.
The view most people never get: a full flat floor, nose to tail, on a Fiesta.
Rear wing, carbon boot lid, and the side-exit exhaust that keeps the floor flat and the heat out from underneath.
On track
The car turned a wheel in anger for the first time in February 2025, deliberately on low boost, and the potential was obvious straight away. Donington Park test days followed, including a 1:15.01 lap and a wet session on a 265bhp map that showed how much the aero does even when the power is turned down. By April 2026 the car was back from its winter rebuild at its full 400bhp and 940kg with driver, and in July 2026 it went to Oulton Park and set a 1:51.85 flying lap.
That Oulton outing also taught us something. The new flat floor trapped so much exhaust heat that cabin and fuel temperatures went through the roof, so the car came home for brake cooling, Thermo-Met exhaust wrap, a cooler fuel system and a fresh set of slicks. That is how development works: Danny has done many track days in this car, and every one of them has produced a change. The lap times are now closing in on outright time attack records for the class, which for a 1.6-litre front-wheel-drive Fiesta is some statement.
Kerb-hopping on a Javelin Trackdays event. The splitter survives because the car is set up properly, not because it is lucky.
Oulton Park, July 2026: paddock and pit lane before the 1:51.85.
Watch the build
The whole project has been filmed from the day the donor car arrived. The three build episodes and the Donington test-day laps are on the Pumaspeed YouTube channel.
Part 1: the plan → Part 2: shell strip-down → Part 3: cage and gearbox → Donington 1:15.01 lap → Donington wet lap →
Between events the car lives on the ramp. Left: a winter rebuild. Right: the front end with the bumper off, intercooler, ducting and splitter mounts on show.
What it means for your Fiesta
Project Aero is a one-off, but very little on it is exotic for its own sake. The hybrid turbo technology, the intercooler and boost-pipe hardware, the brake and suspension thinking and the calibration all feed straight back into the Stage 1, 2 and 3 packages for the Mk8 and Mk8.5 Fiesta ST. The carbon doors and boot lid are being added to the website, and if you want to talk about a serious track build of your own, from a cage to a sequential gearbox, the workshop that built this car is the place to start.
Fiesta ST Mk8 tuning → The Pumaspeed workshop → Our development cars →
Splitter, bonnet vents and the stare. Project Aero waiting for the next test day.
Want to see it in the flesh? Project Aero is based at the Wakefield workshop between events. Follow @pumaspeed on Instagram for test-day dates, or call the workshop on 01924 360002.
