Ken Block's day off

[Daniel]

http://rally.subaru.com/concord.html take a gander at that Dan.

Much more impressive IMHO. I've still seen better though, much better. But if he was posting videos like that on youtube I'd find it far more interesting and morerally related than the two videos he's done

[janvanvurpa]

Pshhh....that's not rallying.

What's everyone's beef? Yes, neither Pastrana or Block have the talent to compete with top WRC contenders, but they still rally. Just because they hold exhibitions doesn't mean they don't enjoy the sport or are trying to corrupt rallying. I was there in Rally Mexio 2007 when Travis was 5 minutes off the pace and I'm still a fan of his team.

Both Travis and Ken are promoting rallying and people are being receptive. That's a far cry from the current WRC.

They are promoting a particular viusion of rally, their vision says: We'll do it YOU do what you're supposed to and merely sit on your lard bums and consume this vision.
If we believe that these hype vids are effective then they must be effective at selling a message that wannabe white "gangsta" boys with endless resources is what's needed to participate.

Since the USA and Canada both suffer from minuscule entries with just a few score of people--possibly as little as 200 active cars for both whole countries together---and as such the sport is totally dominated by anybody with a buget to build extremely expensive cars and get to events, I say videos of thing like this does nothing to HELP the sport here if the numbers of entries continues to fall as it has all during the 00ies once the British (DHiggins, MHiggins and RIP Lovell) went home.
Because the only thing that will help the sport is more entries regardless of what they are driving

(Look at the meager numbers of entries at any US so called "National Championship" and you'll see less than many "Closed to club" events can fetch. 20-30 cars total in a country of 307,000,000 is a poor joke)

So if these type of orchestrated, made for You Tube, extravagant production videos are helping the sport then how could it happen that for example in out Pacific North West season opening event last year while waiting to drive in to a spectator point I was talking to a kid in the "target demographic" who had navigated the 57 miles from the last town, (and that town was 110 miles from Seattle) and so we know he was motivated enough to drive a long way to watch BUT!!! when I asked "what would it take to make you want to build your Golf and get out there and get sideways?" his answer was (and it inarguably illustrates the problem with this mindless promotion) "I can't rally a Golf, it's not turbo 4wd!".
It was a flat statement, he KNEW, he was not asking, nothing betrayed any sense of doubt.
The last 9 years of promotion had failed.

(And I wonder what he thought if he saw the event was very nearly won overall by one friend in his VW Golf--till a last stage fuel pump failure at which point another friend in his 240 Volvo turbo won Overall beating 17-18 Subarus in the process)

The association of rallying with these type of blather does nothing for the sport here.
(Really what good does the sport of rally get if that some 13 year old boy in some sterile suburb in some horrible US city sees Kenny doing this and he is "impressed"?)


Oi Daniel, I used that same "Cloud Dance " video to illustrate what a nice job of producing and editing a piece of REAL action looks like on several forums here in the US.
Good choice there

[cannyboy]

Think you guys are missing the point.
The original got millions of views.
That means sales.

That is what motorsport is supposed to do, but the wrc with it's 700,000 euro cars is not what rallying is about, and does nothing to sell cars.
C4 anyone? Bog standard focus?

Blocks car runs the standard gearbox and shows how a spectular car can be made on the cheap.

We need a grp n + with cars like Blocks, to save rallying.
Big noise and spectacle, more power than control, and done on the cheap.

The wrc could learn a lot about promotion from Block.

Say what you want, the wrc in it's current state is not attracting viewers. Videos like this do.
The wrc has better drivers, so why the hell are we not promoting the sport with spectacular cars and the best drivers in the world?

For those die hard "fans" who knock things like this, are you happy that the wrc is killing itself? If you have outrage, it's the management of the wrc that you should be aiming your ire at.

With the US probably downsizing it's cars in the near future due to nationalizations, rallying has an ideal opportunity to be used as a tool to demonstrate the capability of smaller cars.

And being condesending to new fans of the sport who may not know as much as die hards is not going to grow the sports fan base.

[gloomyDAY]

Think you guys are missing the point.
The original got millions of views.
That means sales.

That is what motorsport is supposed to do, but the wrc with it's 700,000 euro cars is not what rallying is about, and does nothing to sell cars.
C4 anyone? Bog standard focus?

Blocks car runs the standard gearbox and shows how a spectular car can be made on the cheap.

We need a grp n + with cars like Blocks, to save rallying.
Big noise and spectacle, more power than control, and done on the cheap.

The wrc could learn a lot about promotion from Block.

Say what you want, the wrc in it's current state is not attracting viewers. Videos like this do.
The wrc has better drivers, so why the hell are we not promoting the sport with spectacular cars and the best drivers in the world?

For those die hard "fans" who knock things like this, are you happy that the wrc is killing itself? If you have outrage, it's the management of the wrc that you should be aiming your ire at.

With the US probably downsizing it's cars in the near future due to nationalizations, rallying has an ideal opportunity to be used as a tool to demonstrate the capability of smaller cars.

And being condesending to new fans of the sport who may not know as much as die hards is not going to grow the sports fan base.

Hear, hear.

Beautiful post.

[RallyCat909]

I had a short conversation with Block at 100 Acre Wood Rally in Missouri. We talked about the Lancia Delta S4. He was obviously in love with rallying and I was one of the main proponents of hating him. Rednecks kids in Oklahoma are wanting to go to rallies because of this 'media circus' and spectaror points are getting bigger at every US rally while the WRC has two factory teams. The 'old days' will always be better, Im sure people thought Colin Mcrae was a moron in his 'Colin Mcrash' days.

Perspective is a funny thing.

[AndyRAC]

Think you guys are missing the point.
The original got millions of views.
That means sales.

That is what motorsport is supposed to do, but the wrc with it's 700,000 euro cars is not what rallying is about, and does nothing to sell cars.
C4 anyone? Bog standard focus?

Blocks car runs the standard gearbox and shows how a spectular car can be made on the cheap.

We need a grp n + with cars like Blocks, to save rallying.
Big noise and spectacle, more power than control, and done on the cheap.

The wrc could learn a lot about promotion from Block.

Say what you want, the wrc in it's current state is not attracting viewers. Videos like this do.
The wrc has better drivers, so why the hell are we not promoting the sport with spectacular cars and the best drivers in the world?

For those die hard "fans" who knock things like this, are you happy that the wrc is killing itself? If you have outrage, it's the management of the wrc that you should be aiming your ire at.

With the US probably downsizing it's cars in the near future due to nationalizations, rallying has an ideal opportunity to be used as a tool to demonstrate the capability of smaller cars.

And being condesending to new fans of the sport who may not know as much as die hards is not going to grow the sports fan base.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

The sport is killing itself - still confusion over the new regs S2000/S1600T, calendar, etc
Currently, it's not attractive to prospective new Manufacturers.

[jparker]

Think you guys are missing the point.
The original got millions of views.
That means sales.

That is what motorsport is supposed to do, but the wrc with it's 700,000 euro cars is not what rallying is about, and does nothing to sell cars.
C4 anyone? Bog standard focus?

Blocks car runs the standard gearbox and shows how a spectular car can be made on the cheap.

We need a grp n + with cars like Blocks, to save rallying.
Big noise and spectacle, more power than control, and done on the cheap.

The wrc could learn a lot about promotion from Block.

Say what you want, the wrc in it's current state is not attracting viewers. Videos like this do.
The wrc has better drivers, so why the hell are we not promoting the sport with spectacular cars and the best drivers in the world?

For those die hard "fans" who knock things like this, are you happy that the wrc is killing itself? If you have outrage, it's the management of the wrc that you should be aiming your ire at.

With the US probably downsizing it's cars in the near future due to nationalizations, rallying has an ideal opportunity to be used as a tool to demonstrate the capability of smaller cars.

And being condesending to new fans of the sport who may not know as much as die hards is not going to grow the sports fan base.

I agree with you, and I have mentioned that US rally championship can be used as example of what spectacular, but no so expansive car should look like. But, Ken Block is doing as much bad as the good. He's giving wrong impression to people what rally sport is all about, and that's wrong.

[Daniel]

Think you guys are missing the point.
The original got millions of views.
That means sales.

That is what motorsport is supposed to do, but the wrc with it's 700,000 euro cars is not what rallying is about, and does nothing to sell cars.
C4 anyone? Bog standard focus?

Blocks car runs the standard gearbox and shows how a spectular car can be made on the cheap.

We need a grp n + with cars like Blocks, to save rallying.
Big noise and spectacle, more power than control, and done on the cheap.

The wrc could learn a lot about promotion from Block.

Say what you want, the wrc in it's current state is not attracting viewers. Videos like this do.
The wrc has better drivers, so why the hell are we not promoting the sport with spectacular cars and the best drivers in the world?

For those die hard "fans" who knock things like this, are you happy that the wrc is killing itself? If you have outrage, it's the management of the wrc that you should be aiming your ire at.

With the US probably downsizing it's cars in the near future due to nationalizations, rallying has an ideal opportunity to be used as a tool to demonstrate the capability of smaller cars.

And being condesending to new fans of the sport who may not know as much as die hards is not going to grow the sports fan base.

Well I'm not so sure that this particular car is a standard GroupN car.

Sure the video is spectacular, I'm not denying that, but if you look at the video L5->R5/CR posted and then compare it with some classic WRCar or GroupA footage from the 90's then it's still not quite up there for spectacle.

There are certainly problems with the WRC but the last thing the WRC needs is to be promoted as some kind of extreme sport which in a way it already is. It needs to go back to its roots of being a test of car and driver. Going down to groupN+ cars will just make stagetimes slower.

[MrJan]

The thing is though that anyone can be a rally driver? You put a cage in your MR2 and put some rally tyres on it and it's a rally car and you're a rally driver.

Unless I change the suspension I''ll be a rally driver with a broken back

You can argue that Ken is attracting people to rallying. But do any of Kens videos actually show any rallying as such? Not that I've seen.

I could, but I didn't. I'm just saying that it looked spectacular and that the WRC forum is as good a place to post the videos as any I never claimed it was rallying or even that it promoted the sport.

Well I'm not so sure that this particular car is a standard GroupN car.

Didn't the caption say that it had some huge amouth of power? That thing is extremely tricked out

I'm also not convinced that Group N is the way forward. I was out on the Somerset Stages the other month and it wasn't the Group N Evos that people wanted to see but Andy Burton's 306 Cosworth. The way to promote the WRC is to bring back Group B, that'd get people back out on the stages

[JFL]

A gr.N car can still drift, but it doe'snt produce that kind of speed an smoke..
Anyways, what Mr.Block is doing here is what almost every driver has done for the sponsors, just in a much bigger scale!
This is mr.Solberg showing off to his fans in a Gr.n car.. It' not rally, but the crowd loves it, and so does he..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmy3AXqhILI