Mountune engines for Arena's Ford Focus cars in the World Touring Car Championship

The Focus entry in the WTCC will be executed on a private basis by Arena International Motorsport’s Team AON while Ford China will support the CTCC entry through the FRD Motorsports team. 

The program to design and develop the Ford 1.6 litre Global Ecoboost Race Engine for the touring car application has been undertaken by Mountune. The engine is part of Ford's Global Race Car engineering support initiative to make engines and Focus car designs available for teams competing in Touring Car racing around the world. Derived from the highly successful World Rally Championship engine, first used in the Ford Fiesta RS WRC, this engine has been the subject of intense design and development during the latter part of 2011. It first ran on the Mountune dynos in November. The engine is designed to complete a racing distance of around 6000km in every Championship prior to rebuild. 

The engine has a lineage back to the 1.6 litre Ford EcoBoost engine that has completed its first full season in WRC and will compete in the 2012 World Rally Championship campaign for Ford. The engine block, sump and head castings remain and everything else has been redesigned to tailor it specifically for circuit racing. The bottom end features a new steel crank, steel rods, forged pistons, the latest sputter bearings, steel flywheel and torsional vibration damper.   

The standard Ford EcoBoost engine block has been upgraded using Ford’s plasma transfer wire arc cylinder liner technology, used in the engine of the Mustang Shelby GT500 in the US.The direct injection cylinder head, injectors and combustion chamber have been the subject of a major research and development program to optimise the performance using Pectel MQ12 engine management. 

 The new inlet system is a key new visible feature, cast in aluminium with an electronic throttle. The engine also utilises side mounted GDI Racing injectors with an optimised spray pattern and position. The turbocharger feeding air into the inlet is a Garrett unit with an external wastegate, fabricated exhaust and an empty/fill boost control circuit. Garrett is a long-term supplier to Mountune and features on all current Mountune turbo engines. 

David Mountain, Technical Director at Mountune Racing commented “We have been working closely with Ford and their rally partner M-Sport over the past nine months to design and develop this engine and we are extremely pleased with the results that we have achieved in terms of power, performance and durability." 

The engine will shortly begin chassis testing with the Team Aon Ford Focus followed by the Team FRD Focus cars in China. The World Touring Car Championship opens at Monza in Italy on March 11 and the Chinese Touring Car Championship on May 6 in Shanghai.