History and trivia
Ford returned to the WRC with the Focus from 1999 onward, replacing the veteran Escort, and handed development of the car to M-Sport, the team run by Malcolm Wilson in Cumbria. The Focus RS WRC went through several evolutions across the decade as it adapted to the championship's changing technical regulations, becoming the car Ford relied on to regularly fight for stage wins and podiums against the dominant Citroën and Subaru squads. The Castrol livery, with its distinctive green and red scheme, followed the team for much of that period and remains one of the most recognisable images of rallying from that era.
Estonian driver Markko Märtin was one of the team's headline names in the mid-2000s, taking several rally wins with the Focus RS WRC before retiring from competition earlier than expected. The lineup also included names such as 1995 world champion Colin McRae and François Duval. Mechanically, this era's Focus RS WRC ran a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine with all-wheel drive under World Rally Car rules, producing around the class-homologated 300 horsepower. Although it never delivered a manufacturers' title in those years, M-Sport established itself as one of the championship's strongest privateer teams, laying the groundwork for its later role as a mainstay of British rallying.