MANILA, Philippines – Four pre-selected teams from Automotive Media and Ford Club Philippines competed for first place at last month’s innovative Ford Focus Diesel Endurance Challenge. Held at Clark International Speedway, the teams competed to see who could complete the most laps over a 12-hour period, while consuming the least amount of fuel.

The challenge comes on the back of Focus' exciting achievements. The Focus TDCi PowerShift set a new record in fuel economy by covering a distance of 1,432.3 kilometres on just one tank of fuel in the Coast2Coast Challenge 2 in May last year, beating its own record by 106 kilometres.

A great deal of care was taken at the start of the competitive endurance run. The teams were each provided with a 2011 Ford Focus TDCi, pre-screened and checked by authorised Ford Service personnel that they were all set to factory specifications, with new tires and a full tank of gas before the start of the competition.

Team 1, consisting of George Ramirez (C! Magazine), Ardie Lopez (AutoExtreme TV), Neil Paulayan (99.5RT) and Beeboy Bargas (TopGear Philippines) took first place, delivering the optimum balance between fuel efficiency and speed.

They completed 184 laps, using 43.8 litres of fuel to come out on top. The team used 'consistency' as their main plan, and succeeded in getting their consumption down to 5.4 litres per 100 kilometres at one point. Achieving this balance for two hours meant their race average over the full 12 hours was 5.8 litres/100km.

"The Ford Focus Diesel TDCi is an easy car to drive. The technology today that goes into these diesel engines is really remarkable.  They are quick, with heaps of torque to play with and yet efficient, which helped us maintain a very low fuel consumption," said George Ramirez of the winning team.