The car's debut race was the 2004 Rallye Deutschland. François Duval and Stéphane Prévot finished second, marking the Focus WRC's best-ever result at the German rally. However, the race was not without issues. Duval first struggled with the paddle-shift mechanism, forcing him to switch to a backup system that reconfigured the handbrake linkage for manual gear changes—thereby losing the use of the handbrake itself. He was also disadvantaged by a decision from the race stewards; after Special Stage 12 was interrupted, Sainz´s and Martin´s allocated time was better than the time Duval had achieved by completing the full stage. In the third leg, he set a brilliant recovery drive, halving the gap to the leader, Loeb. Had it not been for the aforementioned problems, a victory might well have been within reach. The next event of 2004 was the Tour de Corse. Duval ended the first leg in the lead. However, on the very first stage of the second leg, he spun the car in a corner and dropped to second place behind his teammate Martin. Unfortunately, he was forced to retire during the third leg due to engine failure. For upcomming events, the car was upgraded to 2005 specifications and achieved further great results, this time with the crew of Gardemeister and Honkanen: they finished second at the Monte Carlo Rally and third at the Rally Sweden. Later, the car was converted to gravel specifications and driven by Anthony Warmbold. Since 2006, the car has been competing in Ireland with Eamonn Boland, once again in tarmac specification. Since 2009, the car has raced exclusively in Sweden, driven by Mikael Lindqvist and Ingemar Svensson. The final recorded race appearance dates back to 2013, when it was driven by the wellknown Pontus Tidemand. It remained in Tommy Andersson’s collection until 2019, when it became part of the Invelt collection.
