96 WheelsMag.com.au
machinery with a disregard for limits that
suggests an expensive speeding ticket is a
badge of honour.
I stick close to the limit in the Focus RS
(110km/h when it’s raining, as it is for most
of the journey down) but the two hours
from Calais to Rouen prove this isn’t a car
for gentle cruising. The ride is very firm
even on France’s freshly-ironed tarmac, and
the gentlest throttle pressure gets the 2.3
turbo-petrol boosting and the speed needle
moving quickly to wrist-slap numbers.
Only there’s nobody to do the slapping.
It’s only when a long convoy of police
vans passes in the other direction, blue
lights flashing, that we piece it together.
France is hosting the European soccer
championships and crowd trouble at
early games has clearly rebalanced
police priorities. So we’ve got Russia’s
notorious ‘ultra’-hooligans – their team is
playing tonight in Lille – to thank for our
unimpeded passage to Le Mans.NO EXCUSE is needed to go to Europe’s
most famous endurance race, but we’ve got
one anyway in Ford’s decision to return,
50 years after the original GT40 scored its
first victory at La Sarthe.
The Focus RS is the perfect way to get
there, both for an opportunity to have aproper run in one ahead of sales starting
in Australia in July, and because it’s been
produced by the same Ford Racing team
developing the road-going sister of the GT
that’s racing at Le Mans.
Getting there is part of the fun. Despite
being located deep in France, and run by
the extremely French ACO, the24 Heures
du Manshas long been a British favourite.
(And will certainly remain so, despite the
UK’s vote to leave the European Union
four days after this event.)
At least half the traffic seems to be from
the UK, many wearing race-style graphics,
from door numbers to slogans like “Team
Pie Eaters” to full liveries. We even see
an ancient Mondeo done up to look like a
mid-1990s BTCC racer. Seems like a lot of
effort for a drive down a motorway.
There are no stickers on the Focus.
There don’t need to be. It’s bluer than a
naked Na’vi and comes from a long line of
cult RS models, dating back to Capris and
Escorts of the early 1970s, that ensures
an audience appears every time we stop,
which we do often thanks to its pitiful
400km fuel range.
Petrol stations give the chance to
experience France’s woeful packaged
sandwiches – we’re a long way fromhaut
cuisine– but also for the Focus to drawELL before we
reach Rouen, our
bingo card of
Le Mans journeymust-sees is almost fully ticked. There’s
been a broken-down TVR, a Morgan
being driven by a chap wearing a tweed
suit, three Porsche 911 GT3s, a pack of
Caterhams powering their way through a
heavy rain shower with their tiny wipers
flapping ineffectually, even a British-
registered Lamborghini Aventador that,
clearly confused by all this continental
drive-on-the-right nonsense, leaves a
service area on the wrong side of the road
and narrowly avoids head-butting a Jaguar
F-Type R. The only significant omission is
the one I thought I’d see first, a speed trap.
The French police are drawn to the
influx of British supercars heading to the
24 Hours like piranhas to a raw steak.
About 80,000 people come from the UK
each year, many driving performance
This Focus RS comes from a long line
of cult models dating back to the ’70s