Unofficial free practice of Round 4 of the Global RallyCross Championship at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway was dominated by car hoonigan Ken Block.

Round 4 of the Global RallyCross Championship saw its kick-off today with the first practice runs at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire. ERC24 crew member Qba is at the venue to keep you readers informed. The controversial Gap Jump is planned to be back in action, but the drivers of OMSE (Foust, Eriksson testing for Deegan and Binks), Scott-Eklund Racing (Scott and Hübinette) as well as Ken Block refused to jump their cars today. During the ‘Drivers Briefing’ gathering Ken Block spoke for the competitors and claimed that the landing ramp needs to be higher than the jumping ramp and that the gap needs to be shorter than suggested by the organisers. “We all need to work together to make GRC a success,” said the Ford campaigner.

The Rallycross track at Loudon has a short gravel section that pleased all the drivers who claimed it would produce a lot of fun. The loose surface section is just about 30m long but will be driven during all laps. Just a bit further there is the so-called ‘Car Wash’, a hose over the track to shower the passing cars. According to the unofficial time keeping [no time keeping by the organisers today] of the OMSE team Ken Block was the fastest driver in today’s free practice. Rita Maas and Peter Dams from Belgium claimed Block of being two seconds faster than Tanner Foust, while Stéphane Verdier drove the Hyundai Veloster of Rhys Millen [the Kiwi a non-starter here] to the third fastest time. With Millen, Toomas Heikkinen and Marcus Grönholm missing and no second driver for Dodge alongside Travis Pastrana the New Hampshire GRC round has only 14 entrants on offer.

More pictures to be found here: http://erc24.com/archives/6561