Sharing a field with Mustangs, GT-Rs, 86s, and even a freaking NSX of all things, the Ford Focus Gr.B Rally Car might well be the most traditional of shape and drivetrain for the recently resurrected rally bred category, sporting an entirely unique hatchback silhouette among its fictional rally car brethren, reminiscent of fabled rally cars of the past such as the Escort Cosworth and the Sport quattro S1 Pikes Peak. In fact, when the series first introduced rallying back in 1999's Gran Turismo 2, the Focus was one of the rally cars that was available in Arcade Mode, as Vic will show you all with an unzipping of the creative side of Rick's brain.
Vic unzips as he approaches my rear end! N-nani wo suru ki?
So then, the Focus Gr.B rally car certainly has pedigree, but does it have the punch to deliver the toufu?
Not in my hands, unfortunately. All of these Gr. B Rally Cars are very understeery owing to their stiff default LSD settings helping them break grip into a drift on dirt, which makes grip driving on paved roads nothing short of a strenuous exercise against the steering wheel; you really, really need to wrestle this thing into a corner while committing the most heinous of tyre torture and abuse, the effort required of which is as though there's zero power steering in a parking lot. If you're fortunate enough to have a wheel that lets you adjust the steering ratio, you might want a much quicker ratio when driving these cars, or turning down the max torque settings in the game failing that if you want some strength left over in your arms for your private time after the drive. The Focus Gr.B oddly feels better to drive on a DualShock 4 than with my G29, simply because I can actually turn the car without cramping my left forearm and tearing my right shoulder.
And it's not like drifting is any easier a task on dirt, either, because not only does this particular race prepped Focus make do without its fabled "Drift Mode", but giving these cars a boot full of gas even on dirt just seems to "cure" the car of its lost traction, straightening them out almost immediately unless you've the centre differential set to something suicidal like 10:90 F:R, which just turns the car into more of a doughnut factory than a drift machine.
A lot of what I've said thus far is as descriptive of the Focus as it is of the entire category of Group B racecars, however. It's no secret that the rallying physics of Gran Turismo Sport is notoriously bad, which means that the Focus' only opportunity to shine sadly is restricted to being ran like a fish out of water on tarmac, owing to the super unfortunate lack of a Gr.4 or Gr.B Road Car variant of it.
Roads? With what we're driving, we don't WANT roads!
Equally unfortunate is that, while the Focus does take after the traditional silhouette of successful rally cars of a bygone era, it also takes after the understeer that they are well known for—the Focus is understeery even relative to its understeery compatriots, owing to its disgusting front mass bias. It might also be as difficult a task to tune that understeer out of the car as it is to turn the car, because the spring rate maxes out at 2.5Hz, which is very stiff, granted, but still somewhat soggy for a racecar. For some context, a Mustang Gr.3 of comparable power, mass, and aero starts out default at 3Hz! With the wealth of grip that fresh (and warm!) racing slicks provide, the aforementioned problems of a prohibitive differential and somewhat limp springs are deceptively well masked, but on much more mortal rubber that the crazy folks at Rallycross GT are forced to run, not only does the car refuse to do much of anything, but you'll also be forced to note how the car squiggles around that much more under hard loads. It's not very pleasant to drive, in case it needs spelling out. I'm less of a tuner than I am a rally car driver, which is really saying something, but I couldn't make the car any faster or fun to drive in a meaningful fashion during race day when we were given ~15 mins to tinker with the car, and it really seems to me that the only way this thing feels good to drive is to just slap slicks on. Can you really call yourself a tuner if all you do is to put stickier rubber on?
Okay, so it understeers. Surely the Focus, on the lighter end of the Gr.B spectrum, powered by a diminutive, sanctimonious sounding 2 litre EcoBoost engine would make it much more economical than most other cars of its class, or at the very least, its 5 litre Mustang brother? Hell naw. The Focus drinks as though trying to bed a Rotary Engined Rally Car, and is not at all significantly better or worse in comparison to other cars of its class—all within 1% of each other with 3 laps of BB Raceway at 5x fuel con, which can easily be chalked up to my inconsistent (and very tired!) hands. It's almost as if PD just copied and pasted one value across the board for all the Gr.B racecars, seeing as tyre wear and fuel consumption is disabled entirely on dirt. (yes, I did find a way to squeeze in an RX-7 into a rally car review, deal with it.)
So it understeers like a tank and drinks like one as well. Is there any redeeming qualities to the Focus, then?
Well, it stops well for a start. Like, really well. With the extra drag of its hatchback body, it can brake markedly later than just about any Gr.B machine I've bothered to try. Also, it looks good. Really good. I think it's the only Gr.B car that doesn't look downright ugly, or at least slightly awkward and out of place wearing a rally body kit, and I'm even including the Evo X and WRX VA in that statement. It's also superbly easy to see out of from cockpit view, making it one of the very, very few racing cars I feel comfortable running in cockpit view. I do wish it had a stick controlled sequential gearbox instead of flappy paddles though, as wheel mounted paddles are a disaster to operate when you're drifting lock–to–lock, and even column mounted paddles can be very inconvenient with ill timing. It's just... weird for me to see a Group B car with paddles, and spoils the immersion for me a little.
The biggest boon of the Focus Gr.B however, comes only when you stop trying to drive it "properly" as quickly as possible in a racing scenario, and just drive it the way it wants to be driven instead: Comfort tyres on a tight, technical circuit such as Tsukuba. I know it has bombastic flares and wings, along with a sequential straight cut gearbox, all of which scream "serious business racecar", but the most fun I've found with the Focus is if you just slap some street legal tyres on it and treat it as an 18–year–old's tuned toy. With the gross lack of grip of the road tyres, the car had more free reign to "talk" to me about how it wanted to be driven; it understeered massively and even swung its rear end out simultaneously sometimes, and the gas pedal felt like a primed gate of hell bursting at the edges with demons, and all it was waiting for was a slight nudge of my right foot for all manner of depravity and chaos to unleash onto street tyres that are all too ready to surrender.
It was there and then that everything I had complained about prior suddenly made sense—the front mass bias, the stiff diff, and the soggy suspension—they all came together to create a cohesive package that I finally understand, and would not change a thing about.
I braked early and manhandled the front end of the car into a corner. Just as it would seem as if I was going to miss the apex of the corner, I get off the brakes and give it a boot full of gas, instantly lighting up all four tyres with the stiff diff, rotating the car's nose to meet the apex of a turn in a four wheel drift that can be held, adjusted, and even chained or transitioned from corner to corner. I've always had a difficult time drifting in GTS, but the Focus Gr.B will do it for as long as your bank account and eardrums will last—all without ever touching the handbrake. The front mass bias almost feels like a pivot upon which the car rotates, and the light rear end will break loose in a hurry and a half to initiate said drift if you send enough of the 538HP (401kW) to the rear. The aforementioned soggy suspension let me shift weight over any of the four tyres without ever once permitting excessive body movement, allowing for surgically precise Scandi flicks/ Kansei Doritoufus on whim alone, and the explosively turbocharged engine always has revs and torque to break grip when coupled with the tantalisingly short gearing.
It's just so, so weird that I seemingly had too much grip on dirt tyres on dirt surfaces too wide to have had this experience and felt these sensations!
Of course, even when seemingly set up for smoking sexy stylish sideways shenanigans, the Focus is faster if you grip drive it, but it will protest, lag, and rebel against you every step of the way if you drive it like that, which makes it such a paradoxical thing to race. It may say that it's a racecar on its tin, but in reality I find that it just wants to hoon. It may be a Gr.B rally car, but to me, this thing might as well be Gr.D—Group Formula Drift.
I may not have the skillset for making it go straight or sideways that well, but I'm happy to say at least that I think I got the "author's intent" of the car now, to steal a quote from Waffles. I've had so, so much fun with it after our weekly meetup with it, it's impossible for me to call it a Beater. In fact, I think I've come to like it quite a bit, though I really wish rallying in Gran Turismo was done better so that I can understand it better in turn.
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