Quote Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC View Post
I was in the group at the tour of their service area for MS-RT Supporters at Rally GB. As well as seeing everything happening there close-up, we were also given a 45 minute talk by one of the bosses.

Among the masses of information we were told, in the part about the making of an R5 car and he definitely said they start with a Fiesta ST from the factory which is then stripped and converted into the rally car.

I assume this is because its a Ford (and not manufactured by M-Sport) and so has to be an actual road car to start with. Plus the engine also has to start as a factory 1.6 Ecoboost which is then 'optimised' by the engineers.

The new ST has a 1.5T 3-cylinder engine so maybe they had to wait for this to develop for the new R5 ?
I'm currently supervising build of R5 Fiesta, chassis of which was made from used road car with some 60k km on the clock. All paperwork from M-Sport and FIA is done and is fully correct, so I know what I'm writing. It can be ST or Ecoboost model. It needs to be based on normal road car as needs to have proper VIN number. And engine is not based on ST road car, actually engine for current Fiesta is based on some 1,8 engine from Mondeo I think. It just needs to be engine from the group. Engine for new Fiesta will be based on 2,0l from US market.