The Ford Focus WRC is the company's latest weapon in the World Rally Championship. For years Ford's upper management and marketing was not very keen to invest in rallying. The company's previous contender, the Escort RS Cosworth and its subsequent Escort WRC, was pushed to the outer limits of evolution and development for almost five years, a very long time by WRC standards. Escorts have been Ford's rally contenders for more than 25 years and have brought to light many famous drivers such as Stig Blomquist, Ari Vatanen or Juha Kankkunen. The Escort's racing results, although not shameful, were not in par with other manufacturer's entries. Additionally drivers were coming and going to Malcolm Wilson's team. It was more than time to introduce a new car. Malcolm got the go from Ford management in early 1998 not leaving him too much time to develop the Focus WRC.

The project, codenamed C170, was lead with the outmost secrecy. The Wilson team lead its first tests in General Motors' testing facilities in Great Britain one of the reasons of this choice being the fact that the GM location was very well protected against spies. The base car (i.e. the street version of the Focus) was engineered with rallying in mind. Ford's engineers produced a very rigid body shell (present in all street versions of the Focus) and put the accent on torsional rigidity. It is rumored that the Focus body, pictured below, is 10% stiffer than that of the Escort RS Cosworth an already exceptionally stiff one. The effect of this general body stiffness is that the road going versions of the Focus give the driver the impression that they are under-powered especially so since their road holding abilities are very impressive. Additionally the base body being already very stiff, less reinforcement is necessary to that of the race car thus less weight, although, as we'll see later, weight is one of the drawbacks of the Focus WRC.

Cutaway picture of the Ford Focus WRC car

One last word on the base car. Ford equipped the street versions of the Focus with an advanced multilink rear suspension layout pictured below in its WRC incarnation. This move was intended to homologate a similar suspension layout on the race car. The WRC class car regulations forbid radical changes in suspension layout and attachment points. As a result the everyday Focus driver gets some of the refinement included in the WRC car, much more so than with other WRC cars such as the Toyota Corolla or the Peugeot 206 WRC.

The Ford Focus Multilink rear suspension

The Focus WRC shares no parts with its predecessor or with its street counterpart. Ford took profit of the fact they were designing a brand new car and started from a clean sheet. Apart from the body shell, the engine is new, the Cosworth unit has been replaced by a turbocharged version of the Ford Zetec E 16V engine, and the transmission and drivetrains are completely different compared to those of the previous car. The car was engineered by Günter Steiner. The name sounds German but Günter is Italian. His previous work was on the Lancia HF Integrale when it raced for the Italian team Jolly Club. Günter has also worked for Prodrive on the Subaru Impreza and has, since, joined the Jaguar/Cosworth F1 team in late 2001. Günter's replacement for 2002 is Christian Loriaux ex-Prodrive engineer and father of the Impreza P2000 and WRC2001 WRC class cars. Many interesting solutions to common rally car problems are introduced in the Focus WRC and we will examine them one by one in the next pages.

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