Ford last received the Earth Rally Championship (WRC) in 2017 with a extremely modified Fiesta. It will yet again compete for the best spot on the podium all through the 2022 year, but it will provide a distinctive type of hatchback: a hybrid crossover.
Unveiled as a prototype all through the 2021 edition of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the Puma Rally1 is the avenue-authorized model’s rally-certain alter moi. It shares some styling cues with the generation design, together with the headlights, but it is really a objective-intended race car produced largely by the privately-run and Ford-backed M-Activity team.
Electrical power will come from a turbocharged, one.6-liter EcoBoost 4-cylinder engine that performs jointly with a 134-horsepower electric motor linked to a reasonably small, 3.9-kilowatt-hour battery pack. It’s a plug-in hybrid program that will give the Puma the ability to vacation on electrical power by itself when it is really driving by way of towns, or between levels. In a race, the program will harvest vitality all through braking or coasting and inject it into the driveline to give the car a electric power raise.
Ford’s new #WRC contender is a Puma Hybrid – and it is really making ready for fight on our Hill. #FOS #GW_Ford pic.twitter.com/fkp0ft924c
— Goodwood Highway&Racing (@GoodwoodRRC)
July 8, 2021
Just plucking a hybrid drivetrain from a frequent-generation crossover and stuffing it in a rally car would not have reduce it. M-Activity points out the liquid- and air-cooled program is housed in a ballistic-power casing to make certain it can stand up to impacts with rocks encountered all through rally levels and the g-forces in the event of an accident.
M-Activity drivers Adrien Fourmaux and Matthew Wilson set the Puma Rally1 to the take a look at on Goodwood’s popular hill climb, an event that each year welcomes a stunningly various variety of cars ranging from classics to an experimental Polestar 2. Even though the competition of velocity ends on July 11, the Puma will not likely relaxation for long. It will be applied as a progress car forward of the 2022 WRC year. As of crafting, Toyota and Hyundai have also declared they’re going to be on the starting off grid with a gasoline-electric racer that complies with the new established of rally laws.
Goodwood Festival of Speed protection: