Getting To Grips

New rubber makes for a softer but more fun Focus RS

ONE OF THE most satisfying roads in the entire eastern half of Australia is only 103km as the crow flies from Melbourne’s CBD. The Eildon-Jamieson Road, as it’s unassumingly known, is about 2.5 hours’ drive from central Melbourne and it’s a sleepy Sunday morning as we turn on to this treed in, 66km dream squiggle of mostly second- and third-gear, front-tyre killing corners. It’s raining lightly, it’s foggy, and stringy tree bark debris litters the road, sometimes looking like fallen branches. But we’re feeling good about things, because we’re in an all wheel drive hot hatch with advanced chassis electronics, a front limited-slip differential, oodles of turbocharged mid-range torque and we’ve, err, removed the track-focused Michelin Pilot Sport Cup2 tyres.

Let’s talk tyres (no, stay with me!) as they make a huge difference to the Focus RS driving and ownership experience. As our test car is the Limited Edition, it comes with standard 19-inch forged wheels and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup2 tyres. This package is also optional on the standard RS, but if you found yourself requiring a new set of boots then you might be glad to hear that a set of replacement Cup2s is actually, in our opinion, not the way to go for the road.