FRD’s Ford Focus starts windtunnel testing, targeting European TCR appearance
The redesigned Ford Focus TCR of FRD Motorsport has begun testing at its US base, with the Hong Kong based team expected to appear later in the European rounds of the TCR International Series season, with Rotek Racing’s Robb Holland set to be behind the wheel of the redesigned car.
FRD Motorsport, which run the highly successful Changan Ford programme in the China Touring Car Championship, have taken over the ‘licence’ to build the Focus ST to TCR specification, after the car’s originators Onyx Race Engineering handed over control of the programme after a troubled 2015, working with the Italian Proteam Racing squad, which also suffered a complicated season with poor results in TCR and legal wrangles after its aborted WTCC programme.
The Ford Focus TCR last appeared in the last rounds of 2015, appearing in Macau with James Nash, now at Craft-Bamboo Racing, at the wheel, while Robb Holland drove the car at the previous round in Thailand.
Holland, whose US-Germany-based Rotek Racing team will be working with FRD during the car’s development, said the 2016 Focus TCR is “90% a new car”.
“It shares some of the components with last year’s car, as it had a good base after starting out effectively as the WTCC car,” said Holland to TouringCarTimes.
“The suspension and geometry is all the same, but after that it’s almost a complete new car. It has a Ford Performance-built engine, an Xtrac gearbox and new bodywork.
“The Mountune engine (from last season) was a very good engine, but was probably a bit too much of racing engine for TCR, this new engine is much closer to the production EcoBoost engine,” he added.
FRD Motorsport are working on the build of two cars, one of which will make its debut in the latter part of the European season at Salzburg, Oschersleben or Sochi, with Holland set to take the wheel, with the American one of two drivers doing the development work on the car. The team will then look to prepare cars to order for the various national and regional TCR series once the car’s been turned into a proven competitor.
