Guenther Steiner on engineering McRae's Focus WRC beast: 'It was unbelievable'

“Toyota had this big facility with dynos and everything. We were in a rented office, rented workshop, putting together a WRC car for the first time.

“Unfortunately, the chief designer at the time – Christian Beyer – passed away a few years ago. He was the guy who for one year worked day and night, the guy’s mission in life was to do this thing – and he did a really good job.”

And so he did. The Focus was a compact, aggressive design and immediately competitive.

Powered by a turbocharged Zetec E 16V engine putting out 300bhp, the road car’s stiff body shell lent itself well to a competition car design. What also helped was the teardrop shape being aerodynamically compliant, having an drag co-efficient of 0.36.

Additionally, the car also borrowed from its road-going counterpart the advanced rear multi-link suspension. Unusually sophisticated for a street car available to the public, giving Ford an advantage under WRC rules which forbade radical alterations to the suspension of the road vehicle on which the rally car was based. Therefore Ford customers got a taste of WRC technology in their family car.

Also present was a sequential six-speed gearbox and a pair of active hydro-electric differentials for the front and centre axle with a mechanical differential at the rear.

Steiner articulates the challenges of converting a road-going Focus into an all-conquering WRC beast.

“The regulation was based a lot on the road car, so the biggest challenge to find way around this to introduce technologies,” he explains.

“The car was very, very strong too straight away – it was actually a bit overweight because of that. I think that was the most important thing. We had some good electronic engineers too with the active differential and all that good stuff, which helped a lot as well.”

It was just as well – despite a characteristic recce prang meaning he started the car’s third–ever WRC round with a broken thumb, McRae traversed the none-more-tricky terrain of Kenya to win.

“We won the Safari – it was unbelievable,” says Steiner, unable to hide his smile as recalls the victory. “This was a very small team, nothing to do with the [WRC] teams that you see now.”

The car would win again next time out again with McRae, the Scot eventually finishing sixth in the championship that year. Five more wins over the next two seasons saw him come within a whisker of the ‘01 title, but for a terrifying crash on Rally GB whilst leading.

By this point though Steiner had departed to help run the other big Ford project in the shape of its Jaguar F1 effort, but there’s a special place in his heart for the Focus WRC. He believes had M-Sport been given a bit more time, it could have achieved even more.

“For me in my career, it was the most important project,” he says. “It was my first opportunity to head something up. I think it made me what I am. I got a lot of respect, there were [before the project started] a lot of naysayers because we had a small team, small facilities.

“Now you can look back and say, for nine months, it was a pretty good car, because we won the third rally. But going back, if you would have had another six months of development, we could have won the championship.

“In the beginning, we just didn’t have enough time to develop the car, to test the car. Because we got only nine months, we retired from a few rallies, there were mistakes made, and you cannot just keep up with the momentum and you fall back.

“For sure, it was frustrating that we didn’t win the title. But when you look back now at what we achieved, it was pretty good.”