BP-Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team

From the legendary Escort to the modern Focus WRC, Ford has been a mainstay of the World Rally Championship since the early 1970s. This year, the team begins another quest for rallying’s top honour with the Finnish duo of Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala hoping to collect Ford a third consecutive manufacturers’ title.

The most recent chapter in Ford’s WRC story started when British champion and Blue Oval stalwart Malcolm Wilson won the deal to run Ford’s campaign for the start of 1997. The Escort Cosworth that Wilson’s M-Sport team inherited was long in the tooth, however, and the best Carlos Sainz could manage was wins in Indonesia and Greece on the way to third in the drivers’ standings.

Juha Kankkunen and Bruno Thiry impressed at times in 1998, but work had already started on the new Focus WRC. It made a long-expected debut in Monte Carlo in 1999, and big-money signing Colin McRae showed its promise. McRae went on to win the tough Safari and Portuguese events, but a troubled second half of the year denied the team a title.

The Focus WRC proved to be competitive and versatile but fragile throughout 2000, claiming wins in Spain, Greece and Cyprus in McRae’s hands. McRae won again in Argentina, Cyprus and Greece in 2001, but a nightmare start and end to the year kept the Scot and Ford out of title contention.

A more reliable Focus WRC won three rallies in 2002 and scored points on every round, but both McRae and Sainz were on their way to Citroen, and M-Sport faced a much tighter budget for 2003. The team plumped for cheap, but rising talent in the form of Markko Martin and Francois Duval, while a new, leaner, meaner version of the Focus from designer Christian Loriaux made its debut mid-season. Martin won in Greece and Finland, but speed came at the cost of reliability and it wasn’t a title contender.

Martin won again with the car in Mexico in 2004, before a more heavily-revised version made its debut. It proved to be the quickest car on asphalt at the end of the year, winning in France and Spain courtesy of Martin. For 2005, increased attention on the new Focus WRC meant an even more slimmed down programme with former Skoda drivers Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta providing consistent results, but no rally wins.

In 2006, it was all change at Ford. After a teasing appearance on the last event of 2005, Loriaux’s brand new Focus made its proper debut in Monte Carlo, together with a new driver line-up of Marcus Gronholm and Mikko Hirvonen. The team went on to have its most successful WRC season, with Gronholm and Hirvonen winning eight rallies between them and earning Ford the manufacturers title.

In 2007 the team repeated the feat, with another eight wins and another manufacturers’ title. On his last season before retirement Gronholm scored six wins and narrowly missed out on a third drivers’ title. In 2008 Mikko Hirvonen will take Gronholm’s place as lead driver, while Jari Matti Latvala is promoted into the support role. It’s a big ask for a young team, but can Ford make it three titles in a row?

Current car: Ford Focus RS WRC07

Manufacturers’ titles: 1979, 2006, 2007