Yes, an awful lot of smoke has been blown up the Focus RS's tailpipes in the last year. And the chances are you'll have made your mind up one way or the other about whether going all-wheel drive is a step forward or not for
the RS lineage
, whether manufacturer endorsed drifting
is appropriate
and whether it is in fact the hot hatch second coming or an over-hyped bit of gimmickry.
Intrigued by the RS? Ray's your man!
Whatever you think of the Focus if you've got an interest in hot hatches and how the rivals respond to its scene stealing antics you'll hopefully be interested in this chat with GKN Driveline's Dr Ray Kuczera, Vice President of Global Product Technology. To bring you up to speed, GKN is a supplier of everything from driveshafts to full powertrain packages for a whole range of manufacturers. We've had the chapter and verse from GKN before after attending one its
winter driving workshops
. For those of a nerdy persuasion it's all interesting stuff too.
This time round GKN came to us, Ray hopping straight off a plane from Michigan and into the PH Fleet Focus RS to be chucked around the Longcross test track while attempting a) to keep his breakfast down and b) explain in simple terms what was going on with the Twinster system as we did so. Fair play to him - he did a good job on both counts! The short version? It's all about the front/rear overspeed!
See the full chat on video below!
He's got some interesting stuff to say too, both on how Twinster came about and how it compares with the Haldex-style systems used by competitors like the Golf R, Audi S3 and Mercedes-AMG A45. Turns out many of our assumptions about the latter are wrong too and Haldex isn't necessarily the
death of dynamic handling
many portray it to be. He's not a huge fan of limited-slip diffs on front-driven hot hatches though, which is interesting given how much praise we and others have heaped on cars like the Megane Renaultsport and Civic Type R that use exactly this set-up. Oh, and he also explains why over-eager use of Drift Mode - as demonstrated by us earlier in the year at Anglesey - actually shags the front tyres on your Focus and not the rears. And would the Focus RS still work if you took the front driveshafts out and made it permanently rear-wheel drive? Yes, but not for very long!
On the basis that if you're interested in this kind of thing you'll probably be keen to see the conversation in full, we've put the entire 15-minute chat as it played out from our in-car GoPro. Kind of a PH version of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke. But with less singing and more talk about differentials and clutch packs. Each to their own and all that but we found it interesting and want to offer a big thanks to Ray!
Questions for the man from GKN...
We invited 'questions from the floor' before we met with Ray, the best coming from forum favourite Max_Torque and rather suggesting a degree of inside knowledge on the matter. He asked: "Ultimately the passive yaw balance of a car is set by the vehicle's static mass distribution because this is what sets the ratio of normal (vertical) to lateral loading for any given tyre. Dynamic methods of modifying this static balance (such as the GKN torque apportioning system), whilst able to temporarily increase tyre slip at the rear of the car and provide a positive yaw acceleration, actually lead to a loss in ultimate cornering ability (more slip = less grip). On the RS, how did you decide on the eventual system calibration as a balance between ultimate performance and driver interaction, and is that why the "drift" mode is there, because it actually increases lap times?" To which Ray simply said: "Yes!" So there you have it.
here