The setting couldn’t have been more perfect: Anglesey Circuit in North Wales, a picturesque race track the likes of which we could never, and would never see in America. Imagine the Pebble Beach Golf Links, sitting high on the cliffs over the ocean—misty sea breeze, seals, and all—and bulldoze that thing right out. Then bring in the road crew and lay down 2.3 kilometers and 11 turns of flowing tarmac right there on that oceanfront piece of dirt. That’s Anglesey. You’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s worth the 20 hours of travel from California just to walk the place, let alone drive it. And sitting here in the paddock in front of me is a vehicular scenario, which, likewise, couldn’t be more perfect. A Euro-Spec Ford Focus RS presser, black with those awesome Recaro buckets we saw on Top Gear, unobtanium on these shores. I wrote about my own saga of ordering, waiting an eternity, taking delivery of and driving my own personal Focus RS last month, and since then, here’s what that’s been like: It sucks. I’ve sat in more traffic in this car than I could ever begin to tell you. In the first 982 miles of my Focus RS’s life, the average speed is an indicated 12 mph. That’s what living in LA is like, and with a Focus RS, you might as well have bought a lion, put it in a cage, and then acted all surprised when the lion isn’t exactly grateful. Driving this thing around LA goes like this: First Gear, Second Gear, Stop. First Gear, Second Gear, Stop. Then repeat that, 14,000 times.

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Which brings us back to North Wales, the site of a beautiful film that the immensely talented cast of /DRIVE on NBC Sports are making for our upcoming season 3. I can’t tell you anything about the film itself, except that it put me on the world’s prettiest racing circuit with a carbon copy of the car I spent a year and a half waiting for, and that so far, I haven’t gotten to drive fast at all. Well, almost a carbon copy. The map lights are, for some reason, in an entirely different place, this one has the basic stereo, which is terrible, and of course the driver’s seat is on the right. Driving on the wrong side of the car doesn’t bother me; I’ve shifted with my left hand in the UK, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia—not to mention here in America during the six months I had with my Nissan Skyline GTR, but if I told you I was as quick or precise a driver from the right as from the left, I’d be a liar. It does have the same Michelin Pilot Super Sports as my car, which, on a hatchback, I prefer to the Cup 2 options. It’s so obvious what Ford had in mind with this car after just a few laps around the circuit: this is a track machine. Nevertheless, press launch conditions have been achieved, and it was finally time to find out what a Focus RS can do when pushed. Two corners in to the seaside paradise called Anglesey, and I’m blown away. The power up top for a car at this price point is staggering. It’s happiest above 4,500 RPM with the turbo at full song, and crosses 125 mph on the short, double-kinked, uphill back straight. No lifting necessary here. But the RallySport heritage shines most when diving into a corner. Lean onto the brakes, turn the nose in hard, and it sticks. The steering is knife-edge, and if movement happens, it happens from the back first. That’s right, folks, it has a tendency to oversteer at the midcorner, just like a real rally car. Stand on the throttle, point the nose at the exit cone, and BANG!, you’re gone. No understeer on the exit either. As those of us who drive on track mostly understand—and Chris Harris has so eloquently phrased to me—on a track, it’s all about the front of the car. A good driver can always manage the back of the car, as long as the front goes where you point it. The RS goes exactly where you point it, even after 10 hard laps at a proper pace. The front tires and brakes showed no signs of fade or slop. At full boil, especially while blipping the throttle on downshifts, the fireworks out the back amplify the experience threefold. No stock hot hatch sounds like this without a cat delete. The bass tone of the car— sadly, played through the subwoofer in the trunk—mostly goes unnoticed as long as the RPM’s are in the top half of the tach. ‘Track’ mode is too stiff for any scenario I’ve encountered so far, and ‘Sport’ mode likes Anglesey’s rough-and-tumble corner striping just fine. It’s no problem at all for the Focus’s pace, save for some unpleasant vibrations through my spine. It’s so obvious what Ford had in mind with this car after just a few laps around the circuit; this is a track machine. On the road it’s stiffer than the Golf R or Subaru STI. It's less compliant, and it makes its power higher up the rev range. It’s less usable every day, not for any real practical purpose, but because it simply can’t be enjoyed at a slow pace. When you’re going slow, it’s a boring car. Contrast that with the Shelby GT350R, which is fun to drive both slow and fast, on account of it’s pitch-perfect sound and street presence. When you’re unashamedly romping all over a borrowed presser, all that “God’s Hatchback” bullshit we read from the press launch makes total sense. The clutch and shifter feel better than the Golf R, with just enough extra weight to feel the engagement points of both. It also corners flatter than Golf R, and the engine is more inspiring than STI. It feels like you took either of these cars and did a full track-spec suspension build on them; that’s how the RS is, right out of the box.

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