Ford Focus WRC in the World Rally Championship

Manufacturer: Ford
Category: WRC
Since 1999

After the Escort, Ford focused all its energies on the Focus RS WRC. Its debut took place at the 1999 Monte Carlo Rally, although its evolution and development had started a year earlier under the supervision and direction of M-Sport. The renamed Malcolm Wilson Motorsport team had been in charge of Ford's sporting program in the World Rally Championship since 1997, but the Focus was to be its ultimate test. That first season, Colin McRae achieved two victories in the Safari Rally and Portugal, opening the door to a hopeful year 2000 in which the Scot was joined by Carlos Sainz, who returned to Ford after Toyota's withdrawal from the WRC.

That year Sainz won in Cyprus and McRae, in Acropolis and Spain. Three victories, a number that would be repeated in 2001 but only by the Scot in Argentina and again in Cyprus and Greece. Although it seemed that the title was getting closer and closer, the title was still in the balance. The following season the balance would be identical, with three wins, one for Sainz in Argentina and two for McRae in Acropolis and the Safari Rally.

The 2003 season was one of transition. The two drivers who had guided the evolution of the Focus RS WRC migrated en bloc to Citroën. The experience gave way to the budding talents of Belgian François Duval and Estonian Markko Märtin, who in the middle of the year debuted a new and improved version of the Focus designed by Christian Loriaux. Märtin had a happy debut as a Ford official, since that year he achieved two of the five world championship victories of his entire career in Acropolis -the fetish race of the Focus- and the Finnish 1000 Lakes. Duval, who had astonished a year earlier by winning Monte Carlo with a Puma Super 1,600, went step by step and this first year was a year of settling in the competition.

At that stage, M-Sport began to show its great technical potential by putting improved versions of the Focus RS on the track in very short periods of time. Thus, in the middle of 2004 Märtin and Duval -who already achieved five podiums that year-, received a new evolution of the car that would achieve a total of three victories that year with Markko's help: Mexico, Corsica and Spain. As two years earlier, in 2005 Ford and M-Sport renewed their driver line-up, as Duval left for Citroën and Märtin for Peugeot. Duval would get back in a Ford in 2008, although with a reduced program of seven races.

Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta, both from Skoda, would take the wheel of the two Ford Focus RS WRCs in 2005. The Finnish Gardemeister -also ex-Seat- was the most effective, achieving a total of four podiums. After this step back in their title aspirations, in 2006 Ford Racing and M-Sport returned to bet big with a Finnish duo that was present and future: Marcus Grönholm and Mikko Hirvonen.

In the case of Grönholm, his landing in the oval brand came after winning two titles with his previous team, Peugeot, and his goal was none other than to regain the number one. With him, the statistics of the Focus RS WRC - increasingly perfected - soared by achieving seven victories in his first year as an official, a number to which we had to add Hirvonen's first in the World Rally Championship in Australia. Ford achieved its 50th victory that year, of course, with Grönholm. It was in Sweden, although much more important for the brand and for M-Sport was the fact of winning the manufacturers' title both that season and the following one.

Indeed, 2007 was a continuation of that successful inertia, as Marcus added another five rallies to his impressive list of victories and, to top it all, the victory in New Zealand over Sebastien Loeb by only three tenths of a second, the tightest in history. It was the icing on the cake, as at the end of that year, Grönholm decided to hang up his helmet.

Hirvonen was already ready, and that same year 2007 he already won in Norway, Japan and Great Britain, repeating as third in the World Rally Championship. The relief of Marcus could not have been more successful, as Jari-Matti Latvala, another Finn, debuted in 2008 winning in Sweden -second rally of the season- and becoming the youngest in history to do so in this championship. Apart from the world championship career, that year the Focus RS WRC with which Alfonso Viera and Víctor Pérez won the regional title arrived in the Canary Islands.

The pair of drivers has remained intact until 2010 in the WRC. In this time, Hirvonen has added four more victories (Poland, Finland and Australia in 2009 and Sweden this year) and Latvala two others: Italy in 2009 and New Zealand in 2010, a victory with a very special character because, with it, Ford added 75 wins in the world, more than any other brand ahead of Lancia (74) or Citroen (65), which is reducing its disadvantage rapidly. There are seven rallies left this season, seven races before the Focus RS WRC gives way to the Fiesta WRC.