JW Racing undertake rigorous testing

JW Racing have been busy with some Focus RS Mk3 development and have some great data for all current owners and soon to be owners. Their Stage 1 software has been in test for a few weeks and they are pleased to say all is well. This may not be the finished article for reasons you will discover if you read on, however for many this may be just what they are looking for.

A few very important notes about the tests done JW have completed so far:

• Evolve Automotive (independent non Ford specialists) tested the car in 2wd mode only. We however do not know if this may skew the dyno results at all but for the purpose of their tests JW wanted to see what gains there were from standard to tuned, achieving Ford’s actual claimed outputs were not the main concern.
• Evolves test results fell short of the claims Ford make for the car in both power and torque (Ford claim 345hp and 347lbft) where JW Racing saw 326hp and 335lbft.

• The car has covered only 500 miles from new and all dyno tests were carried out without any adaption of the tunes ie. they were loaded and tested immediately this may have a bearing on the low results but all tests were consistent
• The on road tests (not public highway but on surface akin to road rather than race track or dragway)
• Launch control was not used
• Standard tyres were used
• Tested in Sport mode
• Tested using 99RON fuel
• They tested for 0-60mph , 0-100mph and 1/4m (402.3m) times , results were also shown for 30-50 and 50-70 times (see images b)
• The results were interesting again Ford claim 0-60 4.7 secs for the standard car, we are sure this will have been tested hundreds if not 1000s of times by a qualified test driver until they totally perfected the use of the launch control system however this is not real world driving!
• The stock car saw 0-60 5.1 secs, 0-100 12.6 secs, the 1/4 mile was achieved in 13.6 secs. Its worth noting JW did not spend all day searching for that 1 result out of hundreds to post they only made 4 or 5 runs in each format.

• Evo magazine’s review said they achieved the 4.7 secs to 60 but the 1/4 mile was in 13.5 secs which seems to almost perfectly agree with what these guys saw, although they claim they did go better to 60, but clearly they were using the full launch control.

• The dyno results is down on Ford’s claims but that’s not relevant, we can see that the gains are easily 30hp across a lot of the rev range and in places as much as 50hp, in torque if we take out the small hump at peak we are approx 90nm up, if we leave it in then at least 100nm gain at peak and of course it is stronger across the whole rev range except for the one point
• The best results JW got for the tuned car on road testing were 0-60 4.5 secs, 0-100 11.2 secs, 1/4 mile at 13.0 secs, 30-50 2.0 secs and 50-70 2.4secs which is a significant improvement, 0.6 secs faster to 60, 1.4 secs faster to 100, 0.6 secs faster over the 1/4 mile with a terminal speed in excess of 108mph. Remember this is without using launch control, on 100% standard car and on the real road style surface

• These figures beat the Ford figures in every department and would be even better if they used launch control.

Conclusions

So the summary of this tune so far is, in every department except peak power it is perfect however JW Racing are continuing development with it. This tune is perfect for many people, the car sees a significant overall improvement in performance without changing peak power, this is mainly due to the way Ford have mapped the car. Similar to the Sixth Generation Mustang where they have introduced a boost spike right where they wanted peak power. JW may look to do something similar or possibly create an alternative tune where boost and power may be lowered slightly across the whole range (so maybe see 15-30hp gains rather than 30-50hp) so the increase at peak in boost can be accommodated safely and see a peak gain in power as well.

Horses for courses really but there will be some that just have to show that peak power gain to justify buying a tune but others that will only care about how the car performs. Right now, this car massively out performs a standard model without us even using all its trickery to do so!

Stay tuned for more Mk3 Focus RS development updates from JW Racing