RACING FUTURE; Unraveling Ford's latest road racer.

Byline: CURT CAVIN

Tim Evans followed a group of people wearing Multimatic team shirts into the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express on April 24 and introduced himself as AutoWeek's test driver. Sean Mason, manager of the group's Ford Focus Daytona Prototype, was skeptical. "I'm not sure you're going to fit in the car,'' he said.

It was not an unusual moment for the six-foot-five Evans (right), a native of Northville, Michigan. As a former Can-Am and Trans-Am racer, the 53-year-old has wiggled into many sleek machines over the years. His first had to be cut in half and lengthened seven inches to accommodate him. That wasn't what Mason wanted to hear, so he decided to reserve judgment until Evans and the prototype hooked up the next morning at the Putnam Park Road Course in western Indiana.

Of course, this wasn't just any prototype; this was the Multimatic Ford Focus, the car that won the pole and its class in the 24 Hours of Daytona with Scott Maxwell, David Brabham and David Empringham at the wheel-the car that represents the Blue Oval's toe dipping back into U.S. road racing.

Critics say the Daytona Prototypes aren't a terribly good-looking group, but Evans said the Focus looked better than he thought it would.

"In pictures the car looks kind of homely, sort of a squashed VW Bug kind of look with no real features other than the arch look,'' he said. "But when you look at it in person, it looks good and very effective for its purpose.''

What the car can do is run. The power comes from a Robert Yates Racing-built 5.0-liter Ford modular V8. At a bigger track such as Daytona the prototype can be pushed to 8600 rpm and 185 mph. On this day, the chance to drive it has attracted many people to Putnam Park, including Jim France, CEO of International Speedway Corp., Porsche rival (on the Grand-Am circuit) and former Indy 500 runner-up Scott Goodyear, and an assortment of sports car drivers, interested journalists and prospective customers.