Coming off of a solid race weekend in Hockenheim the weekend prior where HRD's Ken Block put the all-new Focus RS RX rallycross car on its first-ever podium, Block and teammate Andreas Bakkerud were back for more rallycross action this past weekend in Mettet, Belgium. Unfortunately neither was able to repeat the success found just a week ago.
Both drivers dealt with development issues on their cars throughout the Qualifiers, including both suffering the same electrical issue at the same time in the same place on the track during Q1 (Belgium was the first time the cars had been jumped and unfortunately the compression from the landing jostled the electrical kill switches of the cars, disabling their power and bringing them to an immediate halt on-track).
“Belgium has been a challenging weekend but despite the results I enjoyed it," said Block. "I knew heading into Sunday that we just had to maximize the track time and really use it as a development day. After the kill switch issues that we experienced on day one, as well as my further DNF in Q2, I knew that my chances were pretty slim of getting anywhere near the Semi Final. We’ve actually learned a lot about the car this weekend in terms of jumping it seriously and finding a good setup that deals with the high compression loads as well as still staying stable at speed. As I have said before it’s all part of a longer term program—with my team and Ford Performance—it took guys like Petter and Ekström more than a few races to put together a winning package, so we're pretty happy with the progress we've made. I’m looking forward to racing in the U.K. Lydden Hill shares some similarities between Portugal and Hockenheim so we have a good baseline to work from there.”
The next event for both drivers is Round Four of the 2016 World Rallycross Championship, taking place at Lydden Hill in the U.K. May 28th and 29th.
