Head Hoonigan
SVTP speaks with Ken Block about rallycross and his new Focus RS RX
By Steve Turner
If you enjoyed our inside look at the Ford Performance/Hoonigan Racing Division racing effort last week, we thought you might like to hear more from the head Hoonigan himself. As one of the few members of the media embedded with the team at the FIA World Rallycross Championship event at Gran Prix de Trois Rivieres circuit in Quebec, Canada, we had the opportunity to sit down with Ken Block and ask a few questions.
We included several quotes from this interview in our initial story, but Ken actually stuck around for longer than our allotted time and was quite generous with his answers, so we couldn’t touch on everything he discussed. What’s most interesting about our chat is his estimation that the bite-sized chunks of racing offered by rallycross events are custom-made for today’s frenetic Internet generation, which could lead to a bright future for this motorsport…
SVTP was one of a handful of media outlets embedded with the Ford Performance/Hoonigan Racing Division team for the Focus RS RX’s North American debut with FIA World Rallycross.
During the World RX event we were able to score 15 minutes of interview time with Ken Block.
Why is rallycross cool?
“I think the biggest thing to me is the format of racing. I think that the generations that are coming up are on these things (points to smart phone) and used to the Internet. When I grew up, I liked rally. I couldn’t watch rally on TV. Rally wasn’t on TV. I had no way to watch it. Today if you want rally, all you have to do is go to Google or YouTube and type in rally and you can see whatever you want. You can see 10 minutes of crashes. You can see 15 minute highlights from WRC Finland or World Rallycross in Sweden so today’s consumer wants this information in a different way than they did in the past and rallycross fits right into that.”
“Supercross was actually the first example for me where you have a three-hour program on Saturday night and there would be heat races that built up to a main event. They even have two classes and you get a few races in both classes and one main event for the lites and one main event for the big bikes. As a fan, you got to sit there and watch eight or nine races, take breaks and go get a beer and a hot dog, whereas a lot of other motorsports—from Formula One to NASCAR—it’s an hour and a half to three hours of just one race.”
“This, to me, fits into the way consumers want to be fed information. It’s short spurts of really good racing and then it stops… so you get to watch lots of little races and it’s lots of little bits of information that tends to be on the phone or the computer. Even the highlight reels, if you watch the highlights that World Rallycross puts out, they put up like four minutes and it covers, like, two heats, but in those two heats you get to see the highlights of eight little races. So it’s a lot of little bits of action that happen that make it a cool motorsport for people to absorb...”
“I’ll be a critic of American sports right now, but it’s because I come from it. Look at baseball. My dad loved baseball and I have friends that love NASCAR. I can’t watch three hours of one sport. It’s too slow for me. I think that’s why some of these sports, over time, need to change or they are going to suffer like baseball is now. They can’t bring in the fans to the stands like they used to. People just don’t want to go to 160 games for three hours at a time. I think the whole consumer base is changing and it’s because of the Internet and smart phones.”
What do you like about FIA World Rallycross?
“I love the tracks. I love the high level of competition. The cars that we are running now are the highest level that these have been built and it continues to get better and better. In general I enjoy it, but it’s been a bit of a struggle with this being a development year. Other than that, getting these cars up to speed and learning these tracks has been really fun.”
How do the production-based cars and open rulebook help this style of racing?
“I think that’s always been the great thing about rally from years back and now rallycross. There’s the Focus RS that you can buy isn’t so dissimilar from the shape of this body (points to the RS RX). It’s also a 2.0-liter engine, which is on the showroom floor and an all-wheel-drive system. Of course ours is a race car, but still you can’t go buy a Formula One car on any sort of showroom floor. …I think that’s really the big difference between a lot of the racing that is out there versus rally and rallycross. That’s what I have always enjoyed about it the most, that I can see this production car and see the race car next to it and they are very similar in the look and the things that they do.”
Do you think that excites Focus RS fans?
“I think it’s more relatable. I like Formula One. To me it is an art form, but I can’t relate to that car. It’s a beautiful piece of engineering but the companies behind it and the vehicles are really something that’s out of reach for most people. It’s very aspirational but they can’t necessarily relate to it. So that’s why I enjoy these things. …You can buy the Focus RS. You can buy the old race cars. You can buy an old RS 2000 from the Gruppe era and drive it on the street. You can’t do that with a lot of other forms of motorsport.”
How involved were you with the development of the (Focus RS) road car?
“I pushed for a long time for the all-wheel drive, including talking to Edsel Ford years ago; (Telling him) that’s what it needed. So that went a long way, talking to Raj (Nair) and everybody to push that angle. Once the car was in development, I helped mainly with some of the ideas of things they were doing on the car, the modes and setups. I actually tested three different times on the private test track with the different modes and suspension setups. It was an interesting process. It was the first time I ever worked on a production car.”
“All my other testing and development stuff has been with race cars, so I knew how to give the right feedback for the race cars, but when it cam to the production car, it’s a completely different animal. I had to learn where to push and where not to push. That sort of thing, but it was a lot of fun. It was really cool being part of that process, understanding what their goals were and how they benchmark things. Because it was so different from the race car it was very cool to see that side of things.”
How were you involved with M-Sport and Ford in the development of the RS RX?
“…This car was built so fast that we did a lot of in the beginning about what we wanted. Then M-Sport and Ford went of and did what they could to get it done in time. It was done right before we started racing this season, so all of our testing and development has literally been at the racetrack. Overall it has turned out really, really good, but, unfortunately when it is done in such a quick time period, it’s hard to make it perfect.”
“For me this is a long-term program. I have committed to at least three years racing here, so this year we look at as a development year and we have two years to really get that championship. So the fact that Andreas is third overall in the championship and won races is far beyond what we expected. Most of these other cars—the Audi, the Peugeot—they have been developing those cars for a minimum of three years. So, for us to be up semi-close to them and winning events is really quite a bigger step than we expected.”
How does this new Focus RS RX compare to your previous Fiesta racer?
“This car feels… not like a rally car. My Fiesta, because it was based on the World Rally Car, drove like a rally car. This car drives a bit more like a circuit car, so you need to lean on the whole side of the car to get grip as opposed to, if you watch Petter (Solberg), he uses the rear end of the car to get grip. That’s more the style that I am used to, so I am having to completely adjust my driving style, learning how to make this one work.”
“We call it committed, sort of backing the car in and using the rearend for grip. That’s really a lot slower with this car. It looks like we are driving a lot smoother with this car because that’s how this car goes fast. So, it’s quite a change for me.”
Do you prefer pavement or dirt?
“I prefer dirt just because that’s where most of my career has been, but I enjoy the tarmac. I enjoy both. It’s fun learning what’s quickest on both surfaces. I’m most comfortable, really, on the loose stuff. There have been certain GRC races that I completely dominated because they were mostly on dirt, but now it’s a completely different ballgame with this car. Our car struggles a little bit if you watch some of the rally-type cars, they are handling the dirt a little bit better, but we’re a little bit quicker on the tarmac.”
So, this car prefers tarmac?
“Yeah, some of the past couple of races—Norway and Sweden—were both more tarmac, more commitment. Our cars do better there. That’s the thing about these championships. You can’t have a car that’s perfect on every track. They vary so much, from the amount of dirt to tarmac (ratio) to how tight the corners are. The last two tracks favored us, and that’s why Andreas was able to win. This one, with the amount of gravel on it, we are not quite as quick. But that’s the give and take. We have a season to try and win, not just one race.”
What is the acceleration like and how crucial is the launch?
“The launch is practically everything. If you can get out ahead, it’s hard for people to get around, so the launch is one of the biggest parts of the entire racing element. Honestly, every time I launch and go through the gears there is a big smile on my face, because it is so much fun. The zero to 60 is roughly 2 seconds depending on grip level, so it really makes this sort of racing fun.”
“…The tires are built to where we can easily overpower them. Launch is really the one time we get the most grip because it’s straightforward. Once we get it get it turned—even the fast turn, which is fourth gear—I can still completely overwhelm the tires and that’s not the fastest way. So, it’s finding that balance, but the launch is really amazing. We get some wheelspin, but once it picks up we are up to 100 miles per hour pretty quickly.”
What are the benefits of working with a kickboxing trainer?
“The main thing is just reaction times. It’s all about the tenths of a second we are trying to gain. It’s all about the most minimal movements, but very quick reactions with the start being so important. I don’t need big muscles. I don’t need a crazy amount of cardio—our races are five minutes—but what we need is really fast reactions on the start and once we are out on track to be able to react and deal with things quite well. For me, the kickboxing training is really best for that.”
“When I was growing up, I raced a lot of motocross. There I needed very specific muscles. I needed cardio and I needed the endurance. This is quite the opposite. I don’t need the muscles. I don’t need the endurance. I need quickness.”
“…Also, I ride a lot of mountain bikes and it’s the same thing, going fast downhill and having to react, look ahead, make decisions and that sort of thing is really important to me because that’s what we have to do here. The track is constantly changing and we have to react to what the car is doing. If we hit a bump and it sends us one way, we have to be able to react very quickly. For me it’s all about trying to be as mentally and physically fit as possible.”
What is your sense of how popular rallycross is in The States?
“It seems to be quite popular on a fan scale, but as far as finding the right event that can bring out the crowds that it does in Europe… First of all we don’t even have a track. Even this is a rallycross track thrown into a horse track. Really we don’t have anything that compares. I was over in Norway and Sweden for a while and even their test tracks are better than anything we have for rallycross in America. It’s really unfortunate that we don’t have any of the facilities—even for teams to test—in America.”
“Hopefully, in the long run, we will have something in a major metropolis for teams to come out and test and practice and develop a grassroots scene. And, it would be a top-level facility for us to race on. I think the Scandinavians take it a bit for granted because they have so many. The Norway and the Sweden World Rallycross tracks are two of the best tracks in the world and those are only some of several they have. Over time, in America, hopefully in America we can develop some tracks and that will help develop more of a scene here… There’s actually a better stage rally scene than rallycross scene, but rallycross is the one that is growing the fastest.”
