Ken Block Back In A Subaru! Unveiling of His 2021 Livery And First Gravel Test!

i ladies and gentlemen it is beautiful day up here in washington state the reason we're up here is because we've got some good news to announce now earlier this year in january we announced ken's free agent status but since then we've laid kind of low relatively [Music] but now today's the day baby i did lay low but i i did go out and race uh one car and got second overall 100 acre wood welcome back but now we actually get to finally announce a bunch of partnerships so it's gonna be a wild and fun uh 2021 for me and the team racing seven events of the american rally championship but also racing a porsche and the east african safari classic rally and i'm taking on the baja 1000 in a trophy truck uh with jack's redline it's a big year and there's actually still a few more things in works that we're not able to announce yet but some very exciting things on the way too so big program big year actually stoked to be working with several different oems and the first one which is what we're out here testing today is is this car here the subaru wrx sti prepared by vermont sports car that i'll be in for six events in the ara championship so we finally get to release our brand new uh it's a living livery today so quite exciting but as you can see we're finally showing the entire livery today on this car done by the artist it's a living ricardo did an incredible job on all the art for the entire livery has been great to work with and uh we talked him into coming out today at our first test to take a ride so i get to uh hopefully scare the crap out of him at the end of the day here at the test and talking about artists right now we actually had another one of our artists friends step in and make some really cool stuff for this car right here yeah it's ash thorpe digitally rendered this car for some incredible launch images uh and he's also done the tuttle porsche i'll be racing in africa so there's we have one image of that also so let's cut to that [Music] and this marks is it the first time since 2009 that you've been campaigning a subaru right 2009 was the last year that i i raced in a subaru with uh vermont sports car and the subaru factory team i went on and raced with ford for 11 years did wrc world rallycross and a bunch of gymkhana videos but i always enjoyed my time with subaru subaru has a great history and rally and in those short four years that i spent in a subaru uh i had a great history i i won my first national rally in a subaru i had my first drilling care moments at the main rally in a subaru jumped 171 feet for the stun chunky's show which was super gnarly i did my first two gymkhana videos in the subaru i actually raced against colin mcrae in two different x games and got a couple medals uh in a subaru and luckily enough being able to race against colin was incredible because he's one of the biggest inspirations for me is the why i rally first video game oh yeah dirt 2 the video game so back in the day i actually raced with travis pastrana i was the second driver of the subaru team and it was always very cool racing with travis and there's actually a great photo of him him and i side by side jumping what looks like kind of a mini motocross tabletop i think in 2006 at the rim of the world rally and i have a lot of fond memories racing with travis back then but since then he and i have i've raced against each other and rallying rallycross but more on like a one-off event basis so it's very cool for me to be back in a subaru racing uh but against travis and brandon and the factory team in a very similar car so i think it's going to be very good for the fans to watch very entertaining but also three very different personalities racing a lot of other talented drivers here in ara so this will be the first time that ken has taken on the ara championship or at least gunning for it for the full thing since what 2013 yeah so last time i actually raced it full-time in a subaru was 2009 but the last year i raced full-time uh was 2013 and we had had a brand new car at the time and had a couple dnfs early in the season then to win the championship i had to basically win all the rest of the four events and i won three of them and it came down to the last race lspr which stands for lake superior performance rally in michigan and uh on the last day one of the last stages i had one of the biggest crashes of my career and i just tried to go flat out through a corner that wasn't quite flat out my notes and all i did was went a little bit wide and cut a little hole that was hidden in some weeds and just sent me tumbling down the stage so i've raced a couple one-off events here and there like hundred acre wood a few times but this is my first time back for almost a full championship i'm not actually racing the entire championship only seven of the nine events unfortunately one of my biggest competitors travis pastrana has already won two events so i'm actually already in a pretty big hole i do have one second against his two firsts all i can do is go out drive as quick as i can and try and see if i can gain some points back on them in the next six events and not that easy by the way i raced a totally different car at the first event and got second overall now i'm in this car i'm gonna have one major day of testing before this race but that's not enough time to get ready for racing a championship in a brand new car but it is what it is it's racing we'll go out and do the best that i can and enjoy it alex jill samino will be my co-driver sitting next to me as always we're just gonna go for it so this car is a brand new wrx sti built by vermont sports car and when i say brand new i mean brand spanking new subaru did have a little incident last year where one of their cars driven by travis pastrana at the time burned to the ground [Music] they were in process of building this car that it was not ready until this event so when i hop in here in about 10 minutes to rip down the stage it will be the first time it's actually driven in anger on gravels it is beautiful to look at right now pristine and it's so clean vermont sports car puts together a very nice package the finish the packaging it's really quite beautiful if you look around there's actually now that we can see the livery there is some very nice details that ricardo did for me on delivery so it's an entire package there is the base pattern that says tire slayer that you know we've even sold as a a poster piece of art but there's nice details like this i see there's a giant just ain't care on the roof even on the back here there's another version that just ain't care that's a sticker and you can see it see it there some very cool details that he's put together in all that and obviously you can see my name and number here on the back oh yeah so i really love the stuff that he's done for us and it's come together very nicely on the car i may have snagged one of these a little early from our shipping department but this is actually i don't know if you saw this but here take it this is the this is the shirt that matches your roof that's coming out when this episode drops in a day yeah very nice hey ken you're a great cameraman bro no i'm not by the way this is my favorite part i'm stoked for you i think all of us want to hear this thing uh bounce off the uh the two step and get going yeah let's uh let's get to some testing [Music] foreign small [Music] 150 [Music] [Music] this is it's a living aka ricardo gonzalez this is the man responsible for this livery how do you think it looks on the car it's amazing it looks amazing man like just to see in person the colors everything i'm super stoked yo so you're gonna ride with ken yeah i guess all right yeah these guys go pretty fast let's see how it goes i'll be really really scared did you ever see the episode where i rode with ken for the first time yeah oh you did oh man oh [Applause] all right let's do it [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] there you go that was amazing amazing hey well it's very cool for me to be able to work with someone like you but not only have you do all the work we do but then come out and enjoy it right oh my god so much [Applause] [Music] it's like a video game it does like i just feel like i need the controller and i feel like i'm driving it not that good actually man that is so sick it's wild right it's wild oh yeah i love it i thought it was going to be really scary to be honest it's it's surprisingly safe right it is very safe can't block oh yeah man it's just so fun and to hear the motor like the gas and the smell is there anything surprising it's pretty surreal like man you're killing it like it's strange just i feel like i was gonna be really scared but once it took off i had really like a lot of fun i really enjoyed it right like it was amazing but it's a good shake you know like i like the adrenaline and the fun yeah at the end he's like i think i wanna i wanna race a car now maybe not maybe just shotgun maybe you should man that was a lot of fun i it was a good day of testing to go from like zero to the end of the day testing i got a lot more familiar with the car made a lot of changes i was able to drive with this guy flat out with no co-driver i'm just that comfortable in the car now i still need another 500 miles to really be properly set up in this car but i think for now going into the first event racing this car there's not much more i can do unless we had two more days of testing back in the subaru ready to race looking forward to it let's talk about this guy out thank you man do this it's always fun to be able to take the guy that helps us design everything for the year beautiful livery great graphics and be able to see the smile he has coming out of the car that's very cool so let's actually roll the schedule so we can see all the dates and everything i'm doing but it's great bunch of events here in america and east african classic safari rally and baja 1000 so that's it [Music] you

Channel: Ken Block

Views: 1,783,373

Keywords: Ken Block, Subaru, Ken Block New Race Car, Subaru WRX STI, Porsche, porshe, rally car, 911 safari, aint care, toyo tires, sonax, cbdmd, borla

Id: AfMNNM1GpTQ

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021