Official shots and details: Ford Focus RS

Hot on the heels of our earlier story, we’ve got official spy shots of the 2009 Ford Focus RS in action on the Nürbürgring race track.

The front-wheel drive, eagerly anticipated Ford Focus RS will boast 274bhp and 295lb/ft of pulling power from its ‘significantly revised’ Ford Focus ST-derived 2.5-litre turbocharged engine.

The power produced by the Ford Focus RS is slightly down on the predicted 300bhp but is still considerably more the Volkswagen Golf R32's  247bhp.

These images of the Ford Focus RS show the hot hatch maintaining the large front grille, rear spoiler and bonnet louvres (air vents) seen in the computer-generated images we showed this morning.

View spy shots of new 2009 Ford Focus RS

The Ford Focus RS images show the hot hatch in action on the infamous Nürbürgring in Germany, where most car makers take their prototype and near production cars to be tested.

There’s a lot of competition in the motor industry over which car can lap the 14 mile circuit the quickest with the standard Ford Focus ST managing a segment-leading time of eight minutes 35 seconds so we’d anticipate the RS will take this crown at some stage.

Ford has developed the hot hatch’s chassis at the car maker’s Advanced Engineering Centre in Aachen, Germany and this has been passed on to Cologne-based Ford Team RS for fine tuning.

View the computer-generated images of the Focus RS

Jost Capito, Ford of Europe’s vehicle line director for performance vehicles, who was has developed the Focus ST and Fiesta ST 500 said: “We’re staying true to the core RS principles of a no-compromise, affordable high performance road car you can live with.

“The new Ford Focus RS will have the muscles, heart and soul of a genuine RS and will be exciting to drive every day.”

The Ford Focus RS will get its official world debut at next month’s London Motor Show before being readied for production early next year.

View images of original Ford Focus RS

Further details of Ford’s most powerful hot hatch will be released closer to its debut so don’t forget to come back to Auto Trader for the latest images and technical specifications.