Back to school: Ford gives out free Focus RS driver training

31 August, 2016

We’ve all seen the videos of people running out of talent in their brand-new Focus RS, and we’ve all seen the media hype around how Ford irresponsibly produced a vehicle with a ‘drift’ button. Ford has responded to the flurry of mixed reports and media hype with its own solution: driver training. 

Dubbed the RS Adrenaline Academy, Ford USA is now running the driver training at Miller Motorsports Park, in Utah. It’s a free course, and owners of the latest RS are able to attend a small classroom briefing, then they’re out on the track learning about each individual mode the RS now has — especially the drift mode. 

With the courses now being held in America, we’re hoping they’ll make their way down to New Zealand. If the drivers in America are having issues sliding off the road, it’s likely to happen here too. 

To finish first, first, you must build a winner

Can-Am royalty
Only three M20s were built, including the car that was destroyed at Road Atlanta. This car was later rebuilt. All three cars were sold at the end of the 1972 season. One of the cars would score another Can-Am victory in 1974, driven by a privateer, but the M20’s day was done. Can-Am racing faded away at the end of that season and was replaced by Formula 5000.
These days the cars are valued in the millions. It was unlikely that I would ever have seen one in the flesh if it hadn’t been that one day my editor asked me if I would mind popping over to Taranaki and having a look at a pretty McLaren M20 that somebody had built in their shed.
That is how I came to be standing by the car owned and built by truck driver Leon Macdonald.

Lunch with … Roly Levis

Lunching was not allowed during Covid 19 Lockdowns so our correspondent recalled a lunch he had with legendary New Zealand racing driver Rollo Athol Levis shortly before he died on 1 October 2013 at the age of 88. Michael Clark caught up with Roly and members of his family over vegetable soup