If you’re thing is whipping through the woods at 100 + mph with death doling trees on both sides of you, well then, have I got a treat for you! You see set before you are all the best highlights from the 2011 WRC rally season, and when I tell you these are simply outstanding, I’m not lying. We’ve got snow, tarmac, gravel, dirt and crashes that will make you wish you had a roll cage strapped to your chair. In short this video is bad-ass, so sit back, grab a beer, click through and enjoy the highlights of the craziest motorsport of them all.

Source: Youtube.com

Though it can be a little hard to see the road ahead, this GoPro helmet cam footage of Ken Block shaking down the Monster Energy Ford Fiesta RS WRC ahead of Rally Germany is impressive. It gives you an idea of how explosively quick pro rally cars have gotten (again), and it shows you just how puckering driving a narrow country road at triple digit speeds can be.

Block finished 17th overall in Germany, but that just shows how competitive the WRC field is. While the Ford Fiesta RS WRC platform is competitive, its podium finishes have all been earned by Mikko Hirvonen, Jari-Matti Latvala or Mads Ostberg, drivers who don’t dabble in other ventures like running a sportswear company, filming videos or competing in X-Games events. It makes you wonder how Block could do if he gave his full attention to WRC competition.

If you’re counting down the days until the release of Ken Block’s Gymkhana Four, you’ve only got four more days to go. Gymkhana Four, starring Ken Block and his Hybrid Function Hoon Vehicle (HFHV), will hit You Tube on Tuesday, August 16. We hope it’s not a DC shoes sales pitch, thinly disguised as a hip-hop video, but the trailer below seems to indicate that it’s the real deal.

Besides sounding and looking cool, Block’s HFHV features a technology known as anti-lag, Used on race cars (but especially pro-rally cars), anti-lag synchronizes ignition timing, fuel injection and exhaust valve opening to keep the turbo spooled up, even when the throttle is lifted. The net result is improved performance, but at the expense of burning fuel in the exhaust system as well as in the combustion chamber.

Bad for the environment? Yes, it sure is. Fun to watch? Hell yes. Enjoy the video below, and here’s hoping that the fourth installment of Block’s Gymkhana series is worthy of the name.

Source: MotorAuthority

The video below is about three minutes long, but it’s really about the 10 second crash that Block and co-driver Alex Gelsomino had in Portugal. I think I know what they were trying to do here, but only because I very nearly stacked a race in a similar fashion once. My crash (or near-crash, since I didn’t actually roll the car) couldn’t have lasted more than fifteen seconds, but the time spent sliding across the infield dirt, on two wheels, was the longest ten minutes of my life. I can still play it back in astonishing detail, and I clearly remember taking my hands off the wheel (since broken thumbs suck), shutting off the fuel pump and oil system and getting ready to hit the release on my harness. If that’s what Block, or more specifically, Monster World Rally, was going for here I’d say they nailed it. Except for the whole swimming underwater in Nomex thing, which I’d just write off as art. Enjoy.

As years go, 2011 hasn’t started off on the best note for me. Compared to Ken Block, however, I can’t complain: he hasn’t fared well in any single WRC event run to date, and had a massive crash in Portugal that destroyed the Monster World Rally Ford Fiesta in the pre-race shakedown stage. He’s got some downtime in April since his wife is due to “pop out (their) 3rd kid”, but he’s back to his usual balls out schedule in May. His next WRC event is the Rally of Argentina on May 26, but don’t expect Block to be idle until then, since there’s plenty of testing and tuning to do. He’d tell you what his schedule is himself, but it’s still not finalized for the remainder of 2011. Despite suffering a 16 g crash just days before the interview below, Block seems none the worse for wear and we wish him all the best for the rest of the season.

Source: YouTube Rally America Series

Ken Block logs some flight time. Image: RallyMania

Go big or go home could be Ken Block’s personal trademark. The Rally / Gymkhana / X-Games driver was shaking down his Ford Fiesta WRC car, in preparation for this weekend’s Rally of Portugal, when he experienced a “fourth gear incident”. In other words, Block was hammer down when he lost control, rolling the car five times and sending both himself and co-driver Alex Gelsomino to a local hospital for evaluation. The good news is that the pair were uninjured in the spectacular crash; the bad news is their car was a write-off, at least for this weekend’s event. Both Block and Gelsomino are back in the U.S., where they will begin preparation for the upcoming Rally Argentina, scheduled for May 26 to 29.

Block and Gelsomino are off to a disappointing start in 2011, having finished 14th in Sweden and 12th in Mexico. A DNF in Portugal won’t help the team’s point standings, but Block had already commented that 2011 was more about learning how to drive in WRC competition than about winning races. Block and Gelsomino’s best finish to date came in last year’s Rally of Spain, where the pair pulled of a 9th place finish.

Source: Autosport, via AutoGuide

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/90137

Image: RM Auctions

Sometimes I really, really hate the internet. It takes a lot of surfing to find stories that are worth posting, since nobody wants to read a site that just re-hashes manufacturer’s press releases. Sometimes you stumble across something that you shouldn’t, simply because it will create an unrelenting desire to sell everything you own and buy it. Take, for example, this 1986 Ford RS200 Evo, found on Bring A Trailer, that will be sold at the RM Auctions Amelia Island event. To say I want this car is perhaps the biggest understatement in written history; I, in fact yearn for this car in a most illogical and unhealthy manner.

Image: RM Auctions

First, there’s the issue of price. RM estimates that it will sell between $80,000 and $120,000, which almost puts it within my reach if I sold everything I owned, cashed out all my retirement accounts and spent the next three weeks robbing liquor stores and cooking meth. I seriously doubt the car will go for that little, but if it does I will forever kick myself in the ass for not bidding on it. At the peak of the market, RS200 Evos were selling in roughly the $250,000 range, which made them utterly unattainable. This low mileage, unmolested example seems to be just marginally unattainable, and if it sells for less than $150,000 I can’t imagine the buyer losing money on the car.

Image: RM Auctions

Next, there’s the issue of performance. RS200 Evos were about the last of the Group B rally cars, and made about 600 horsepower in race trim. They were, of course, all wheel drive, but that didn’t matter much since they had a wheelbase similar to a go-kart. Make a tiny mistake behind the wheel, and the RS200 Evo will hurt you, badly. Make a big mistake behind the wheel, and it will kill you, in a most spectacular and violent fashion. Since this car is in street trim, it “only” makes about 420 horsepower from it’s turbocharged 2.1 liter four; given that the car only weighs 2,315 pounds, that’s plenty good enough. Zero to sixty should come up in under 3.5 seconds, and you’ll hit the relatively low top speed of 118 miles per hour in just over 9 seconds.

Image: RM Auctions

Why do I have such an affinity for the car? It’s hard to say, but I did get to see one set the lap record at the track where I used to teach. With a competent driver behind the wheel, the RS200 Evo will embarrass a surprising number of cars, including more than a few open wheel race cars. If you said, “this is the only fast car you’ll ever own”, I’d be OK with that, since I can’t imagine ever getting tired of driving it. I may go to the RM Auction, strictly in a journalistic capacity, but I’ll be watching the bidding on this car like a hawk. My guess is that it’ll bring in more than $150,000, and that’s simply too far north of my budget to even contemplate.

Source: RM Auctions, via Bring A Trailer

Image: Monster World Rally Team

The WRC season kicks off this weekend with Rally Sweden, and here’s two minutes of Ken Block trying to keep his Ford Fiesta WRC car pointed in roughly the right direction during shake down testing. Despite studded tires and AWD, Block seems to spend a surprising amount of time sideways, scrubbing off speed. It looks like the new Ford Fiesta may prove even more challenging to drive than last year’s WRC Ford Focus. Block knows what he needs to do to improve in 2011, and a lot of that is dependent upon creating better pace notes with his co-driver, Alex Gelsomino. More below.

New for the 2011 Season, the Monster World Rally Team Ford Fiesta uses a 1.6 liter EcoBoost turbocharged four cylinder engine. I can’t seem to find how much horsepower it’s putting out, but in Block’s own words, “I’m absolutely loving the new WRC car. It’s amazing. At first I wasn’t sure what to expect out of the 1.6 liter turbo, but it actually feels faster than the WRC Focus with its 2-liter turbo engine. The Fiesta is just a great chassis for rally.” Here’s wishing Ken and Alex much success in 2011.

Source: Monster World Rally Team

Ken Block may just be the hardest working man in show business. For 2011, he’s piloting the Ford Fiesta WRC car you see above in Sweden, Mexico, Portugal, Argentina, Germany, Australia, France, Spain and Britain. In between, he’s running select Rally of the Americas and RallyCross events, launching a “Gymkhana World Tour” in Los Angeles, Australia and Austria, and competing in the Summer X Games. In his downtime, he’ll film Gymkhana Four and Gymkhana Grid, visit the Goodwood Festival of Speed (again), attend the Weston Festival of Transport and drop in on the Monza Rally Show. Just for fun, he’ll be working on three other, top-secret project and hanging out with scantily-clad blonds. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. Video below.

We here at RideLust had a fairly epic 2010: I got track time with the last of the Dodge Viper Coupes, the Shelby GT500 and the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan and Coupe. Mike raced One Lap Of America, 24 Hours of Lemons and got to star in a BMW video alongside people like Buzz Aldrin. Mike and I drove the new Chevy Volt from NYC to Detroit, and we both got to drive a boatload of new cars throughout the year. As cool as all that was, it pales in comparison to the year that Ken Block had.

Taking your fifth consecutive win in a Rally of the Americas race is a pretty cool way to kick off your year, even if the rest of the season included mechanical DNFs in four out of six races. Competing in the WRC (especially as an American driver) is epic enough, but racking up three sixth-fastest stage times in your second WRC race is nearly superhuman. Much of Block’s 2010 WRC season can best be described as “a learning experience”, and mechanical issues kept him from three top ten finishes. No one ever said that WRC was an easy sport to master.

I love some of the highlights referred to in Block’s retrospective, like the “Goodwood Festival of Speed Award For Hooning” and “Lost Hitler As A Fan”. Even some of his fails made me smile, like “Hired Cool Kids To Write Lyrics About Cars” (remember the utterly forgettable Gymkhana 3, Part 1?) and “Lost A Few Subaru Fanbois”.

Here’s wishing Block all the best in 2011. The WRC schedule should keep him plenty busy, so I doubt we’ll see him run Rally of the Americas this year. I’m good with anything he does, as long as it doesn’t involve filming music videos with the Cool Kids.