The Focus RS Adrenaline Academy Sold Out in Just 5 Days

Registration for the Ford Focus RS Adrenaline Academy went live this week, and all 432 slots are already reserved for 2017.

Last year, Ford Performance announced plans on offering new 2016/2017 Focus RS owners a free, 1-day precision driving school called the RS Adrenaline Academy at the Utah Motorsports Campus in Grantsville, Utah.

Although Ford announced no official dates at the time, RS owners like myself, jumped at the chance at signing up for future updates on the new driving school. But the early announcement by Ford also had a lot of us Focus RS owners wondering if there would even be a 2017 course for a couple of reasons.

First off, when the RS Adrenaline website launched back in August, there was still only a handful of Focus RS owners on the road enjoying the new hot hatch! Back then, I think I saw a total of maybe three out here in SoCal, so I knew it would be a while before all the allocations were delivered.

I also figured it would take some time for the RS Academy to receive their own fleet of cars to use for the school in the first place. I have been to many different high-speed driving courses, and most schools have a pretty big fleet of spare cars at the ready to quickly swap out due to the amount of abuse these vehicles take during the course of instruction.

So I didn’t really expect to even see an RS Academy schedule until well into the 2017 calendar year. In fact, I was thinking late ’17 for an early ’18 start date. So I pretty much kept it on the backburner.

When I saw the three RS Adrenaline Academy cars at SEMA, I thought maybe Ford would be offering the school early 2017…YES! (Photo Art of Gears) /

And it wasn’t until last year’s SEMA Show back in November when I saw an RS with the “Adrenaline” Academy logo on it that got me fired up again about the school and made me think that maybe it was actually in the works.

Well last week, thanks to our friends at FocusRS.org, we got a tip that the Adrenaline Academy was OPEN for registration! This shotgun announcement by Ford naturally came as quite a shock to many of us. And it only took five days for the complete 2017 schedule to be reserved.

More from Art of Gears

Ford Performance announced 27 classes for 2017, running from April – October, with each class being able to support a total of 16 drivers. If you do the math, that’s a total of 432 slots!

Now many of those slots were filled by RS forum owners as soon as they found out, (and yes, I was able to reserve a slot!), but if you happened to drag your feet for even a day trying to figure out when you wanted to plan your trip to Utah, chances are you were out of luck.

The crazy part is that I didn’t even receive my official email from Ford saying that they were accepting registrations until the day before it was sold out! Shout out to Hoonigan over at focusrs.org for putting out the word!

Ford Performance has not announced if they are planning on opening up any additional slots for 2017, but they did say that you can call the school and put your name on a waiting list in case someone drops out.

But really, what are the chances of an RS owner doing that?

Next: Diesel Brothers New Preview Is Off The Chain!

Art of Gears will be doing a full review of the RS Academy when it’s our turn to head to Utah, and we can’t wait to check out the school for ourselves. For more information on the Ford Focus RS Adrenaline Academy including dates and schedule, click on the official website here.

Home/Car News