Ken Block is quickly becoming our favorite subsect celeb through which we can live our wildest fantasies. The founder of DC Shoes has made a name for himself in the rally scene, and has even gone so far as to appear on Discovery's Stunk Junkies to jump his rally-prepped WRX 171 feet in the air – a new world record.The man loves driving and he loves the snow, so when the opportunity to close off a section of New Zealand's Snow Park Resort and hoon his way around the mountain presented itself, he jumped at the chance. The result was an awesome photoshoot that landed him and pro-snowboarder Torstein Hargmo on the cover of Snowboarder magazine. The two athletes launched off a specially made 55-foot ramp, with Block landing some 70 feet in the distance. While the photo on the right is cool enough, we can only imagine how much fun Block had prior to the shoot on the empty slopes.
[Source: Rally Sport Magazine via Winding Road]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Richard @ Nov 6th 2007 7:08PM
If he had flipped over the main plane of the wing to get some lift, he might have gone even farther!
speedball3 @ Nov 6th 2007 8:50PM
I'd guess that with a flipped wing, the car would nose over since I believe the STI is slightly nose heavy and the added uplift would only make it worse. It would make for a really cool trick if he could do a nose flip in his car though. Travis Pastrana should try for that, seeing as he's already mastered the dirt bike back flips.
Richard @ Nov 6th 2007 10:26PM
Brilliant!
why not the LS2LS7? @ Nov 6th 2007 11:10PM
Nose heavy means the nose will fall faster?
Galileo proved this is incorrect 400 years ago.
Gravity affects all objects equally, regardless of weight.
Sheesh.
Arsenal @ Nov 7th 2007 12:38AM
Leave the physics to those who actually understand physics. Leave the reading to those who can actually read as well.
1) no one said the nose will fall faster than the tail
2) that doesn't mean the nose will not begin to drop before the tail does
If you don't understand the difference between those two things, stick the advice about leaving physics and reading to those who can.
sheesh
why not the LS2LS7? @ Nov 7th 2007 4:03AM
You apparently can't read speedball's post. He says the car already will go nose down because it's nose heavy. No, it goes nose down because the nose leaves the ramp first and thus begins falling while the back is still traveling up the ramp.
It wouldn't go less nose over if the engine were in the back. It's not an issue of how much the nose weighs, because objects (ends of a car) of different weights do not fall at different speeds.
Richard @ Nov 7th 2007 7:38AM
Gentlemen,
Speedball3's comment was related to the propensity of the nose to head down faster because of lift that would be generated at the rear of the vehicle by my proposed flipping of the wing plane to provide said lift.
Relative to speed of the fall. I am not a physicist, but I do believe that Newton showed, not that all objects fall at the same speed, they clearly do not, but that all objects accelerate at the same speed ina fall (32 ft/ sec x sec).
Thus, while a Subaru and a goose feather will accelerate at the same speed in a free fall, the goose feather's ultimate speed will be limited - by the effect of aerodynamic drag - to a much lower terminal velocity than the Subaru.
VP @ Nov 6th 2007 7:25PM
That is sweeeeeeeeeet. Can't really say much more than that.
speedball3 @ Nov 6th 2007 8:48PM
This guy is so cool. Watched him race at the X-Games 13 Rally competition (which got almost zero coverage this year). Ken Block certainly made a good call on rally driving.... if I ever made millions, there's no other place I'd want to be than behind the steering wheel of a rally car.
Seminole @ Nov 6th 2007 8:59PM
That's insane!
Reminds me of the Top Gear episode where they race a Evo against a bobsled.
rob @ Nov 7th 2007 12:15AM
look at me jump this car bro!
Guenther @ Nov 7th 2007 10:57AM
That is a LOT of air underneath that little Scubaru. That could have been a spectacular crash. Too bad there aren't more pictures (other than the 4 on the site). I'd like to see the divot the car left on impact. Reminds me of the publicity stunt when Audi ran a 100 up a ski ramp back in the mid 86.
Guenther @ Nov 7th 2007 11:06AM
OK- stuck on stupid today- here's the original-
http://www.carmondo.de/video/detail/91
KeithM @ Nov 7th 2007 1:11PM
re:why not the LS2/LS7?
Imagine you have to jump off your roof and you have a piece of plywood to help you slow the fall. Would you jump and just hold on to one side of the piece of plywood since all objects are affected by gravity equally? Or would you try to center yourself?
If you seperate everything out of the equation except the force of gravity and the opposite force from air resistance, the car essentially becomes a lever. There is a fulcrum where the force from air resistance is equally surrounding that point. If the car's center of gravity is at a different location then the fulcrum, the car is going to tilt.
FYI, they did put weight in the trunk to help prevent the nosedive.
Sheesh.
why not the LS2LS7? @ Nov 7th 2007 6:08PM
The car weighs so much compared to the bottom area of it, it won't make any difference in practice. It's not a feather.
Compared to the plywood, the car weighs 16x as much with a wind area of about 3x as much. In in the plywood case, your weight is already greatly overwhelming the wind resistance. Watch Mythbusters, they tested it.
KeithM @ Nov 7th 2007 6:49PM
I watched that mythbusters, that is why I used that as an exaggerated example :)
Do you remember how out of control the plywood became? It went out of control because of the center of gravity being out of whack with the fulcrum, agreed?
How big of an affect is debatable. Obviously the car has more mass so it would take more to move it at the same rate. Imagine putting a piece of plywood perfectly balanced on a point and moving it up and down - now imagine doing the same with a subaru. You can still move the subaru up and down - it just moves slower with the same amount of force. Putting 200lbs, however, in the trunk of the subaru will definately make it move a significant amount in the time that car was in the air.
PGAero @ Nov 7th 2007 7:04PM
Yeah, the aerodynamic drag effects of a car's undercarriage don't play much a role in how that car behaves when airborne. Ask this dude:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1252498464502394753
And ask this guy about how well wings effect the attitude (a technical term here) of his car (albeit in reverse.):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8764686215960779932
I would be most interested in the ramp design. I suspect that would have a very large effect on the stability of the car once airborne.
Anyone have a link to a video of this?
KeithM @ Nov 8th 2007 3:00PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgvn99opdc
moophisto @ Nov 10th 2007 2:01PM
more complete footage, albeit low quality :/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1kC7IihZ2CY
Vectortrance @ Nov 10th 2007 10:09PM
Driver's life has the actual video.
http://www.driverslife.com/2007/11/10/ken-block%e2%80%99s-ridiculous-subaru-wrx-sti-jump/