Tough luck for Ken Block, who crashed during the second stage of his debut World Rally Championship race. Block was carrying too much speed into a tight right / left combo, and was unable to brake sufficiently to slow the car down.

On the plus side, if you were wondering what it feels like to put a WRC car into a ditch and hillside at speed, the video shows you pretty clearly. Now you don’t have to wreck your own car.

Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire attends the California Rally Series’ School in Ridgecrest, CA, to learn how to compete in Rally America and California Rally Series Events. While there, he took advantage of an opportunity to find out if the Lancer Ralliart is worth the extra money over the Lancer GTS by flogging them both mercilessly in the dirt.

Nice one Matt.

Source: The Smoking Tire

Photo: Rally America

Congrats to Ken Block, Alex Gelsomino and the Monster Energy World Rally team for taking the win in this weekend’s 100 Acre Wood Rally. The victory is Block’s fifth consecutive 100 Acre Wood win, but his first win in the event driving a Ford.

Despite a challenging first day that left Block behind Travis Pastrana’s Subaru and the Mitsubishi of Antoine L’Estage, the Monster Energy team was able to make up lost time in the second stage. L’Estage was penalized for a water crossing issue and Pastrana broke a rear control arm, allowing Block and Gelsomino to move into first place.

Rally driving is one of the most dangerous disciplines in all of motor sports. Drivers compete against each other in timed stages to see who will come out on top. Sometimes though, things don’t go as planned, as was the case with this lucky driver. I swear, the more rally videos I watch the more I wonder who is crazier, the drivers or the fans. Seriously, look at how close they stand to the road… WTF?

Need proof? How about some in car and on course video of Ken and navigator Alex Gelsomino shaking down their Monster Energy Ford Fiesta in preparation for this weekend’s 100 Acre Wood Rally in Missouri.

I love speed as much as the next guy (probably more), but four wheel drifting a car at triple digit speeds on a muddy farm road, a few feet away from tree line isn’t exactly my idea of fun. Mad props to Ken and the other Rally America and WRC drivers and navigators. I’ll take a stab at driving any race car on pavement, but I’ll yield the driver’s seat when it comes time to haul ass through the woods.

For those of you who don’t know, the 24 Hours of LeMon’s Racing Series is a no-holds-barrded showdown between cars purchased for no more than $500. I ran one event last season at Stafford Speedway in CT. in a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair and to say it was chaos would be very kind indeed. To give you an example of the mayhem that sometimes takes place check out the following video. What you’re seeing is a late model Ford Escort coming in contact with a 1972 Gremlin. The Escort catches a wheel and gets launched into the stratosphere so quickly that the poor bastard behind the wheel never saw it coming. This is grassroots racing at its finest.

Mikko Hirvonen took his 12th WRC win (his first in Sweden), beating favorite Sebastian Loeb and fellow Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala. Hirvonen takes a seven point lead in the championship into round two in Mexico.

The French have a healthy relationship with lust. To them, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s no repressed, punished, or controlled. It’s celebrated as the ultimate expression of unbridled passion. And it shows in their cars. Bare with me here. The Citroën DS is one of the sexiest cars ever made and since then, the French have periodically produced subtly sexy rides. The Citroën SM, the Renault Alpine A110, the Peugeot 205 GTI, the Renault Clio V6, and many more. They’re not drop-dead gorgeous like Italian supermodels, but they’re sexy in a girl-next-door-you’d-definitely-marry kind of way.

The DS3-R is the latest sexy ride to come out of Citroën. Rumor is it’ll come packed with a turbocharged 1.6-liter four good for more than 200 horsepower and will ride on rally-inspired suspension. A race version of the DS3-R will replace the current C4 rally car on courses in the near future. Chances of the DS3 or DS3-R being available for sale in the U.S. are close to zero, but we can dream.

Via: Autoblog

Monster Energy Drinks leaked the long awaited video on Ken Block’s new Ford Fiesta, and our friends at Jalopnik put it up on their site this morning, along with a couple of images of the car. The Video has it all; Panning images of the car, Ken with what looks like a light saber, and a sound track that is in no way related to the images, but had a drop dead hook. This is Ken’s most ambitious tour yet, including six stops for the Rally America Championship, 7 stops for the WRC, and at X Games 16 in LA. More information at Monster World Rally Team website, which goes live tomorrow.

The Citroën SM was by no stretch of the imagination a rally car. It was heavy, luxurious, and big. It’s Maserati-derived V-6 only put out about 175 horsepower and its self-leveling hydro-pneumatic suspension and speed-sensitive power steering were complex and fragile. Still, that didn’t stop the mad Frenchmen at Citroën from fitting it with some Cibie lights and entering it in one of the most grueling rally races in history, the 1971 Rallye du Maroc in Africa. And despite its plush ride and complex engineering, it won.

What we have here is a later short-wheelbase rally racing SM. It’s a souped-up SM that’s been cut down to make it lighter and faster. It also has a wicked Kammback “breadvan” style rear end for improved aerodynamics. No breadvan SMs were ever sold to the public, but an industrious builder could replicate one with a Sawzall and some serious metalworking skills.

Checkout more pics of the SM breadvan at Serious Wheels.