Ken Block’s team manager Derek Dauncey says his driver took plenty of positives away from Rally Guanajuato Mexico, despite the American’s fraught outing on the world championship qualifier.
Block was classified 12th overall on the Leon-based event last week but relied on SupeRally to restart on Friday, Saturday and Sunday after a spate of mechanical problems and a brush with a tree stump prevented him from going the distance.
However, Dauncey was delighted with Block’s pace whenever he did enjoy a clean run in his Monster World Rally Team Ford Fiesta RS WRC.
“We had a lot of problems but if you look at the stage time and you look at his percentage off the leaders both in terms of the fastest [driver] and the fastest Ford it’s a really good weekend for us,” said Dauncey. “Ken was 0.9 seconds per kilometre off on the first stage and then constantly 1.1 or 1.2 seconds, which is very good.”
Dauncey explained that Block started the event intent on driving conservatively but upped his aggression on Friday afternoon when his team identified that he had pace in reserve.
“We were trying out different driving styles on Friday morning but we were dropping more in the afternoon so he changed his driving style and straight away took a big chunk of time out,” said Dauncey. “We thought less aggressive would be a better option because of the puncture risk but at midday service on Friday we realised his tyre wear wasn’t as much as the other Fords so we told him to go out and be more aggressive with his driving and it worked.”
Despite the problems Block encountered, Dauncey said the Gymkhana star never lost his motivation on his way to picking up four points for his team in the battle for the manufacturers’ title.
“With Ken it’s always big smiles in the morning. He loves driving the car and was very disappointed not to get as much miles in as he wanted,” said Dauncey. “I’m sure the M-Sport boys will have the car sorted for Portugal because he was able to take a lot of positives out of the weekend.”
Dauncey confirmed that Block would conduct a set-up confirmation test in Portugal on the Monday before Vodafone Rally de Portugal takes place from 24-27 March.