Ford: Teething issues with car will be addressed.

Ford Team RS director, Jost Capito has pledged that the 'Blue Oval' will continue to work on the new Focus in order to improve its reliability.

Although Ford had the pace at the Rally Argentina over the weekend, unfortunately the car again proved fragile - transmission problems sidelining number one driver, Marcus Gronholm on day one while leading and his team-mate, Mikko Hirvonen was also forced out on Friday, just one stage later, when his engine went down to three cylinders.

Although Gronholm re-started on Saturday under the SupeRally format, Hirvonen was not so lucky and the damage sustained to his car proved too much to repair overnight. The fact Gronholm managed to recover to finish tenth and score a point in the manufacturers' was something, especially as it kept Ford points scoring record intact, but overall the result was a big let down for the M-Sport ran squad.

"It's disappointing that we led the rally and scored the most stage wins but our pace wasn't reflected in the results," confirmed Capito. "We must continue to work hard to overcome these teething problems with the new car."

Ford team director, Malcolm Wilson was also less than pleased: "I'm happy that we have kept our points record but disappointed because that is all we've managed to salvage from this weekend, especially when we've shown that we can take the challenge to [Sebastien] Loeb [and Kronos Citroen]. The performance of the Focus RS was again a positive and we found a solution to Marcus' problem and ran the car faultlessly for two days.

"It's a shame for Mikko that he didn't gain the experience of running a full rally after he retired on Friday."

For the record, the Ford team have now scored points on 66 successive WRC events, stretching all the way back to the opening round of the 2002 series - the Rallye Monte Carlo.