A Ford Performance engineer has revealed that the drift mode featured in the Focus RS was discovered entirely by chance.
Speaking to motoring.com.au, Ford Performance vehicle and engineering manager Tyrone Johnson said the mode wasn’t at all planned.
“It was more like one of my guys sitting in the car – the lead dynamics guys sitting in the car – and next to him is the guy who is doing the calibration of the all-wheel drive system with a lap-top on his knees,” Johnson said.
“And they are talking and he says ‘oh, let me try this out’ and he tries it and he says ‘oh, that’s cool, can you give me more of that?’. And he gives him more and he says ‘that’s really cool’ and then it starts working.
“I guess it’s just because we are a bunch of crazy guys. We just do things,” Johnson told the Australian publication.
He went on to explain that Raj Nair, the brand’s global technical and development chief, later gave the drift mode the green light.
“We put it together and we showed it to Raj and we said ‘this is a nice little trick we can also do with this … with the mode system and the specific set-up for drifting capability’.
“And it was actually Raj who said ‘we have got to market this, this is a cool feature. We need to make this a prominent part of the programme, as opposed to a side note’,” said Johnson.
Drift mode has proved controversial in Australia, where safety campaigners have called for the Focus RS to be recalled to have the mode disabled.
Watch our track test of the Focus RS here and see it battle the Audi RS3 here…
