Hong Kong team FRD Motorsport are to build a completely new version of the Ford Focus TCR car, having previously taken over the development of the ill-fated Onyx Engineering effort in 2015.
The team, which is headed up by Kenneth Ma, took over the development of the Focus during 2015, including competing with an entry in the latter half of the inaugural TCR International Series and TCR Asia Series season.
However, such was the scale of the issues which the team encountered with the car that it has decided to effectively start again from scratch.
Development work will take place at the team’s workshop in Colorado, USA. The outfit plan to build four cars to begin with, which will be fitted with Xtrac racing gearboxes and a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine developed by Ford Performance in Dearborn, Michigan. Previously, the cars utilised a standard, production gearbox, which was among the many issues encountered.
“Following the technical issues we experienced last year after taking over the programme which had been started by another engineering company, we have decided to start over from scratch,” explained Ma. “We re-designed the car and will develop it, which prevented us from taking part in the Balance of Performance test at Valencia.”
Brian Ma, Vice President of Technical Operations, confirmed that the team plan to enter the TCR International Series from the fourth round of the season onwards.
“We will enter two cars for the full season in the TCR International Series,” said Ma. “However, because we expect to begin testing in April, our target is to join the series in Monza at the earliest.”
Driver details will be revealed in due course.