These days, the M-Sport Ford World Championship Rally (WRC) team is working to help The Blue Oval return to its former glory days in that series, even bringing back Carlos Sainz – who was part of the company’s initial WRC effort back in 1997 and piloted a Ford Focus racer during that golden era – to help provide some expertise. Regardless, it’s hard to truly put that era into perspective in today’s world, though a new video does a great job of it.
This new clip from Hagerty conjures up some fond memories of Ford’s WRC glory days, when Colin McRae and Nicky Grist did battle behind the wheel of the legendary Mk1 Ford Focus WRC. Along with digging into the history of how that particular car was developed, Hagerty also discusses the links between it and the road-going Mk1 Ford Focus RS, and even gets to drive the real-deal race car on a legit rally test stage in Wales, to boot – car number 0001, for that matter, which came straight from FoMoCo’s heritage fleet.
Developed from the ground up in a mere seven months by a group of just 10 people, the Mk1 Ford Focus WRC – a group headed by Guenther Steiner, who many know from his time as the former principal of the Haas Formula 1 team. Luckily for him and his team, the road-going Focus was already a fantastic machine that made a great base for a rally car, which made that particular job a lot easier.
It took just three races before the Mk1 Ford Focus WRC claimed its first victory, and it was followed by many more. The road-going version of the WRC racer shared many things in common with its rally counterpart, amazingly enough, and has since become a legend in its own right. Today, many years after both were squarely in the spotlight, each still drives just as brilliantly as they did back then, too.
No Comments yet