AUSTIN, TX, JULY 16,
2018: In his first outing of 2018 in his Ford Focus RS RX
rallycross car and his debut in the Americas Rallycross Championship, this past
weekend, Ken Block overcame a series of technical challenges throughout the
race day yesterday and placed himself and his Focus squarely on the podium,
landing his best rallycross finish in the last three seasons with a 2nd overall
and kicking off his return to racing rallycross in America in a big way.
During his qualifying races
throughout the day on Saturday, Block finished first in his Q1 race, first in
his Q2 race, third in his Q3 race and second in his Q4 race, leaving him
sitting in 3rd overall in Qualifying going into his Semi-Final—which, due
to some unfortunate contact from elsewhere in the field, found Block finishing
in 2nd and setting him up for P3 on the starting grid of the Final. From that
starting position, Block advanced to P2 by turn 1 and held that position for
the entirety of the Final.
“Today was a challenge for sure,”
said Block. “We had some technical issues with the suspension on both my car
and on Steve’s [Arpin] car, which made it hard to keep the pace we needed to be
competitive out there, but, Steve’s Loenbro Motorsports team did a great job
getting the cars repaired and out there and kept us competitive. It definitely
felt great to be back racing rallycross in American and I’m stoked that I’m
heading home with a 2nd overall from Austin. I’m looking forward to Canada in a
few weeks, that’s a fun track that suits our cars well and I’ve got two seasons
of experience running it from my time in World RX, so I’m hoping for another
positive result up there.”
Block’s Hoonigan teammate, Steve
Arpin, qualified 5th overall but suffered a mechanical failure in his rear
suspension in the Semi-Final and was unable to advance to the Final.
Both Block and Arpin will be
competing in their Ford Focus RS RX’s in a few weeks during ARX’s third round
of the season, taking place August 4th and 5th at Trois-Rivieres in Canada.
