Ken Block has never drag raced in his life. That's what he claims and, to be fair, if we were able to drift half as well as he is, we probably wouldn't spend one minute of our lives going straight either.
It takes skill to be good at drag racing, but it doesn't take too much if all you want is to... do it. In that sense, we all kind of drag race daily whenever we accelerate from a standstill. Sure, we may not be racing against another vehicle or the clock, but we are essentially doing the same thing that happens on a drag strip, only in a much tamer form.
However, a good driver with solid technical knowledge should have no problem turning into a decent drag racer as quickly as their first race. And Ken Block definitely ticks all those boxes, meaning we shouldn't give too much weight to his claimed lack of experience.
And then there's the car he's driving. The Hoonigan team built the Hoonicorn as a drift car, but little did they know that pretty much everything that went into it also made it one hell of a drag racing car. The people playing the Forza 4 video game picked up on its potential pretty quickly, which meant the Hoonicorn could be seen taking part in virtual drag races more and more often.
A brief recap of the car's specs will instantly reveal why: 1,400 hp, all-wheel-drive, sequential gearbox, and huge grippy tires (315 Toyo R888R) in all four corners. If somebody wrote a recipe for a car that could accelerate hard in a straight line, that's probably what they would go for.
Realizing the Forza 4 gamers were on to something, Ken and the team decided to replicate the Hoonicorn drag races in the real world. Not the type to dawdle, they went straight for one of the fiercest opponents imaginable: the McLaren Senna, the car that, incidentally, was on the cover of the Forza video game.
On paper, the two aren't that well matched. The British hypercar has just over half the power of the Hoonicorn, is only rear-wheel-drive, and weighs roughly the same. It should stand no chance, and yet it's a McLaren and we all know how well McLarens do in drag races. Watch the clip and, if you feel like it, join us after for a debrief.
So, that happened. The Hoonicorn has just unveiled itself as a phenomenal drag car that looks capable of obliterating any stock road-legal model you can think of. The way it builds up revs and eats through those gears like a rabid wolverine is out of this world. It's also enough to make the Senna look as slow as a shopping trolley. Scary stuff. (Races start at 11:00)
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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