Backmarker Appreciation No.2: Ford Focus Mk2 (WTCC)

Image credit: WTCC Media

Given the significance of Ford’s involvement throughout touring car history, the brand has been unusually absent from the sport in a factory capacity since the demise of Super Touring. While once we saw Cortinas, Capris, and Sierras define eras of touring car racing, Ford has largely limited itself to its involvement in Supercars in recent years.

In European championships, and indeed on the world stage, there has been a near-total reliance on independent teams operating without any backing from the brand itself. The sole (partial) exception came in the first season of the revived World Touring Car Championship in 2005, although a return to the glory days it was not.

Ford’s entry onto the international stage was announced in November 2004, with German team Hotfiel Sport set to run the new second-generation Focus. However right from the outset, the programme’s identity seemed unclear.

Even the initial press coverage wasn’t entirely certain quite how involved Ford was in the team, with Autosport reporting that it “[would] not be run as an overt factory team”, though added “there are plenty of signs that the Blue Oval is committed to making the programme a success.”

Ford also played down their involvement in the programme. Then-current Ford Team RS boss Jost Capito seemed to confirm the team’s independent status by saying “we hope this will inspire other teams to develop their own programmes using the new Ford Focus."

However Hotfiel Sport was entered as a manufacturer team, and the car had actually been prepared by Ford Team RS themselves; Hotfiel had contributed to the development, but it certainly hadn’t been an independent venture. In reality this was essentially a customer racing programme: Ford produced a kit for the Focus to convert it to S2000 spec and struck a deal with Hotfiel Sport to run the car for the 2005 WTCC season.

This was at least a logical choice of team to partner with, given Hotfiel’s record of success with Ford models. The team had enjoyed great success in the German Touring Car Challenge (DTC) in the early 2000s, winning the drivers’ title with Thomas Klenke in 2002 with a first-generation Focus and finishing as runner-up in 2003 with Patrick Bernhardt racing another Focus.

Ford’s decision to pursue its WTCC project came fairly late in 2004, which meant the process of getting the cars ready in time for the season opener was frantic. The entire development period was reportedly just a few months, so understandably expectations for the season were fairly modest.

Capito discussed these aims following the announcement of the programme, saying “we want to make the Focus fully competitive by the second half of the season. Any podium results before that would be regarded as a bonus.” Given the series of articles this car features in, it probably goes without saying this didn’t age especially well.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit there. Back to the start of the 2005 season: Hotfiel Sport managed to get the cars ready in time for the opening round of the season at Monza, where their all-German driver pairing of Thomas Klenke and Thomas Jäger were ready to take part in a piece of history with the opening weekend of the revived WTCC.

It proved to be a tough introduction to the championship. A mechanical failure for Klenke in the first race forced an early retirement, which also prevented him from making the start of the second race. Jäger did at least get to complete the first race, albeit in 28th place; second to last of the finishers following an off-track excursion.

These weren’t unexpected difficulties however. Given the rushed nature of the car’s development, Monza was always likely to act as something of a public test session for the team. There wasn’t much chance to gather data in the second race though, as Jäger was caught up in someone else’s lap one shunt and retired on the spot.

Given it wasn’t an overly heavy impact it came as a surprise to the team that the chassis was a write-off: according to team boss Hans Hotfiel “the car was bent up until the doorpost. We had to start building an all-new car as soon as we were back from Monza on Tuesday morning.”

Having quickly assembled a replacement chassis, the team travelled to Ford’s Lommel plant in Belgium to conduct some more thorough testing than they had been able to over the winter. This allowed some key data to be gathered, as the rigidity of the chassis was tested and the car’s centre of gravity was established.

The following rounds offered marginal improvements from Monza, although the Focus was still some way off the pace. Imola provided the best weekend of the first half of the season, with Klenke finishing both races in the lower midfield.

With the fifth round of the season taking place in Mexico, Hotfiel Sport elected to skip the weekend to dedicate more time to testing the car and trying to extract more pace from the package. Returning at Spa for round six with a changed driver line-up, things didn’t go particularly well.

Klenke remained with the team, but Jäger stepped down for personal reasons. The seat was filled by Michael Funke, who had previously been one of the team’s development drivers. His debut weekend with the team was a disaster however; less than a minute into the opening lap of the first race he found himself sitting upside down.

There was much more to be positive about next time out at Oschersleben at least. Klenke scored a tenth place finish in the first race, with Funke matching that result in the second race. This was a bit of a false dawn for the team sadly, as rounds eight and nine were a return to the usual punishing combination of reliability woes and a lack of pace.  

For the final round of the year in Macau there was another change in the line-up: development driver Patrick Bernhardt was given the nod over Klenke due to his previous experience with the circuit. This paid off, as the team enjoyed their best result of the season with a ninth place for Bernhardt in the final race.

Unfortunately, due to the points system only extending to eighth place Hotfiel Sport just missed out on scoring their first point. It was a positive way to end a difficult year though, and given some more development (and some backing from Ford) there appeared to be potential in the Focus. 

This wasn’t to be however, as that was the last we saw of the second-generation Focus in the WTCC. Ford took the view that the car was now competitive enough and ceased their involvement in its development, despite the Focus having fallen some way short of their pre-season aims.

As far as they were concerned, it was now down to independent teams to make the final strides with the car. Unsurprisingly this approach didn’t really appeal to teams who had the choice of several other already competitive cars, with manufacturers who actually seemed interested in the series.

Really, the story of the WTCC Mk2 Focus is a perfect summary of Ford’s general attitude to touring car racing in the last 20 or so years. They want to have a presence in the sport, but are completely unwilling to put any resources in themselves; instead choosing to rely entirely on independent teams who are often operating on small budgets, and could really use some backing.

For their part, Hotfiel Sport did about as well as could really be asked given the hand they were dealt. They hadn’t raced in a championship of this calibre before and were tasked with developing a brand new car with limited support; it’s hard to be critical of their efforts.

Meanwhile Ford clearly never had any desire to seriously tackle the WTCC, which raises the question why they even bothered in the first place. With how committed BMW, Chevrolet and SEAT were at the time, there was little chance of competing at the sharp end with an independent project.

Instead of trying to take on these other brands, Ford seemed to think they were above that: they could do the bare minimum of throwing a privateer a half-baked customer car and let them put the work in instead. That went well for them.