Normally, I’m not keen on just posting a press release and leaving it at that, but in this case, I don’t know what else to say. Ken Block returning to the 100 Acre Wood? Outstanding! He has absolutely owned the event in past years having won the rally more often than any other person in the event’s history. To be sure, we will have photos and hopefully some interviews as well as Shaun and I head to the 100 Acre Wood next week to cover the event.
KEN BLOCK TO COMPETE IN RALLY AMERICA’S RALLY IN THE 100 ACRE WOOD
“We are very excited that Ken Block will be competing in the upcoming Rally in the 100 Acre Wood,” said Bill Fogg, CEO of Rally America. “There is always a buzz around Ken, his racing skills and his personal brand. His participation is thrilling for our race organizers and Rally America fans all over North America.”
“Rally in the United States has definitely grown in popularity since I first got started back in 2005,” said Block. “It’s been great to watch that growth and I’m stoked that this year I’m finally getting back to the series I first started in by competing at Rally in the 100 Acre Wood. It’s one of my favorite rallies, so I’m stoked that it’s how I’m kicking off my 2012 season.”
Block has won the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood in five consecutive years from 2006-2010, breaking legendary driver John Buffum’s record for most wins at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood. Block has ten overall wins at Rally America National Championship events.
Good to see Ken back at a Rally America event. With his now global appeal from WRC and his amazing marketing skills, I hope this will cause a jump in RA interest. I think RA has a significant growth opportunity this year. Would be great to add Pastrana and maybe even Faust to spice things up even more. I would bet networks would have to take notice if we had that as an all-star cast. Probably a pipe dream, but would be cool nonetheless.
Network interest likely won’t materialize in 2012, but the new RA ownership has been doing a great job at making the events more widely available to the masses via their live streaming of the stages and interviews in the service parks. It was a great to see Sno*Drift as it was developing rather than reading PR reports after the fact.
I would love to see the NBC Sports Network pick up the Rally America series for 2013. I think it would fit their line-up quite well, and there are some really great stories to be told. As you mentioned before, Hansen’s story would be a perfect feature piece.
I totally agree that the grass roots efforts of Hansen, Crazy Leo, Knox, and Duplessis are what makes Rally America so great. The Travis Hansen story from last year was just amazing. I was more excited to run into him at the service park at Oregon Trail Rally last year than any of the other drivers. I’ve also been especially impressed with the 2WD scene being so exciting and competitive. I think the Fiesta R2 is a game changer for affordable yet technically advanced rally racing. Granted the Subies are great, reliable, and get a lot of good support, but I have to say those nimble little 2WD Fiestas can just move! It would be awesome to have an academy type series here in the states with matching R2s.
The Sno*Drift live video was awesome…when the signal came in. Granted this is always going to be an issue when trying to do live feeds in remote areas via 3G/4G cellular networks vs. satellite, but they did a great job. I just wish they had also saved the recordings locally to the camera as well. That way they could have taken the segments we didn’t see due to lost signal, edited them, and then posted them on the web for later viewing. So far I’ve only seen little 2 minute sound bytes on the Rally America we site. Minus the minor gripe above, I think that as a first attempt it was a huge success! I was also quite impressed with Matthew Johnson’s commentary. He gave a lot of good technical details technique and equipment without making it too complicated for newcomers to understand…and that takes skill. I had a similar positive experience when Pat Moro provided commentary at a spectator section at Oregon Trail Rally last year. I’m really looking forward to more live rally broadcasting from 100AW, even if it doesn’t come from a big network.