[Focus RS News]

Lost in the limelight of the LA Auto Show, journalists got their first crack at the Focus RS earlier this week at Willow Springs Raceway in California.

However, the catch was that journalists would not be driving, they would be riding shotgun.

Ford Performance Chief Engineer Jamal Hameedi said that there will be no dumbing down of the RS. Aside from the Recaro Shell seats in the EDM RS, the chassis tuning for America and Europe are identical.

The guys over at SVTPerformance said that during their laps with Ford's Jim Fritz they could feel the new found grip offered by the AWD system, but more importantly, as Fritz approached the limit they said they could feel the RS moving its torque around to keep pushing the edge farther away.

We'll leave the last words to Steve Turner from SVTPerformance: The more he pushed, the more tossable the Focus RS became. It glided through the tight corners, and if the tail twitched out a bit, it came back into line in an instant. As the track straightened it put down the power and pulled to the braking zone. The brakes were more than capable, and if there’s one word to describe this car from the passenger seat, it is “balance.”

 

[ExtremeFocus]

Anyone on the forum going to take the Focus RS onto the track? Interesting to hear from someone who's not a professional tester.

 

[centurion]

Not bad feedback for the RS in its stock form, as people modify it and improve on it i'll be interested in seeing how the performance of that compares to stock, and of course at what cost.

 

[Cosmonaut]

Why do you think they didn't let the journalists actually drive the vehicle. is it part of them controlling information? This is more of a teaser and less of a all out here it is type thing?

 

[Northern]

Why do you think they didn't let the journalists actually drive the vehicle. is it part of them controlling information? This is more of a teaser and less of a all out here it is type thing?

My guess is that they wont let anyone drive them and put out numbers and such until the car actually goes into production adn they provide actual production line cars. but that's just my guess.

 

[Jobber]

Why do you think they didn't let the journalists actually drive the vehicle. is it part of them controlling information? This is more of a teaser and less of a all out here it is type thing?

because they dont trust them. show them the true performance with ford guns in the seat then at a later date they can come back and gush about how great the car was once they got to drive it and meld their performance with the memories in the back of their retinas. quite fascintatng stuff really.

 

[centurion]

because they dont trust them. show them the true performance with ford guns in the seat then at a later date they can come back and gush about how great the car was once they got to drive it and meld their performance with the memories in the back of their retinas. quite fascintatng stuff really.

That or the information ends up being leaked through someone else just so the guy who got first hand experience can better his chances at not getting in trouble.