Back. Ford. Good

Good news from the world of the BTCC: Ford is back. Kind of. Next season, Arena Motorsport will be running a team of Focus STs, with a driver line-up fronted by Top Gear’s favourite bus driver, Tom Chilton.

It’s not an official factory team, but we don’t really care. We just hope they resurrect that classic yellow and blue livery – remember the Mondeos of the late nineties?

Ford has been around the BTCC grid since the first season, fifty years ago. Except back then, it was its battleship-sized Galaxies doing the door-bashing, not hooliganistic hot hatches.

Arena Motorsport’s STs are a rare sight in a field of Vectras, Civics and BMWs. But that’s the great thing about the BTCC – you’ve got diesels, front-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive, saloons, hatches and pretty much every silhouette going. But the Focus’s wide, stable platform could be enough to take on the Vectras and Civics at the front.

It’d be good to see it happen. The first Ford to win the championship was a Zephyr in 1959, and Mustangs, Anglias, Falcons, Sierras and Mondeos have all won it since. So let’s hope 2009 adds another Blue Ovaled racer to that list, or at least give the dominant Giovanardi a bloody good beating.