MOTORSPORT: Ken Block interview

A few weeks ago we brought you a story about American rally driver and You Tube star Ken Block (more here). Recently the Carsales Network was able to interview Block and hear about his career in rallying, the story behind his Gymkhana videos and his role at DC Shoes.

Despite having become one of the most famous rally drivers in the world and built up one of the most successful clothing brands Block remains a down-to-earth individual.

With so many ego-driven racing drivers it's refreshing to find Block has not let the massive success of his online videos inflate his ego. Even though he has arguably become more famous than even five-time World Rally champion Sebastian Loeb around the world, Block doesn't consider himself in the same league as the WRC aces.

Block is a lifelong rally fan but his career is only five-years old after he only discovered an outlet for his passion in 2004 when DC-sponsored Freestyle Motocross megastar Travis Pastrana got involved in the Rally America series.

"I've been a huge fan of rallying since I was a kid," Block says. "It was the one motorsport I saw on TV occasionally that looked like the most fun. I grew up snowboarding and skating and riding dirt bikes, so from the dirt thing rallying looked liked it was the one that was the closest to what I liked to do with the dirt bike. Cars that went around in circles or just went straight didn't appeal to me as much as the rally cars.

"So that was my interest in it from the beginning, but I never knew at all there was a championship in the United States. So when Travis Pastrana did some rallies in 2004 with Subaru some press about that came out so that just woke me up to the fact that there was rally in the States, I just thought it was a European thing.

"So I contacted the people that did the car and people for Travis and they hooked me up with a rally driving school. I went out and did it, found out I was pretty good and fell in love with it and began rallying from there."

Results came thick and fast when he joined the Rally America championship in 2005. Block was crowned rookie-of-the-year and quickly become one of the championship's leading drivers alongside Pastrana.

But for Block driving a rally car is too much fun to just limit to traditional rally events and being a late starter in life at it, he takes every chance he can get to get behind the wheel. Despite still playing an important role as Chief Brand Officer for DC Shoes, Block has been able to make some of the most entertaining and awe-inspiring car videos including the longest jump in rally history (52-metres), playing on the snow fields in New Zealand and his most famous work Gymkhana Testing and Practice.

That four and a half minute video of Block drifting, sliding and doing donuts in his specially prepared Subaru Impreza STI has been watched over 20 million times. Not bad for something originally intended as a bit of fun to show his mates.

"A couple of years ago a guy here in Southern California started doing these Gymkhana events, and was going to four or five a year," Block explains. "I had that car because I had done some other events.

"That car that I did the first Gymkhana video in, that car with different graphics on it did the Gumball 3000 in 2005 and then it did a race called One Lap of America in 2006. Then it was 2007 I did the first Gymkhana event so I then got really psyched on this Gymkhana Series, so I took that car and converted it into a Gymkhana car.

"As I got that car finished and ready, the guy that was doing those events stopped doing them. I was really bummed because I had this amazing car, that was really fun to drive but I had nothing to do with it.

"So I decided I wanted to go out and drive it and that airfield, a place called El Toro, is the place where I did my first Gymkhana event. So I went up there with the guys that film a lot of stuff for our rally team and we just started. Basically I looked at that airfield and said 'I like these particular things around the airfield. Let's go up and film it and I'll practice and test the car. Change the set-up and stuff like that and maybe we'll get some cool footage.'

"We'll we shot for one day and I got home a couple of days later and they sent me the footage. I just looked at it and said 'Holy shit! This stuff is amazing.' I had no idea what it looked like that day while I was driving. I knew the stuff I was doing probably looked pretty cool, but I had no idea how cool it looked. So we went back for a second day, to kind of fill in some holes and do some new things to finish it off, and that's how it got made.

"It's literally just one of those things. I just loved that particular car and that particular style of driving, so we just went out and filmed me practicing and testing. Like I said, it came out so good we finished it off on the second day to make it as good as it is, and put it on the internet."

And it became an almost instant hit, which ended up creating an interesting problem for Block.

"No, I had no idea [it would be so popular]," he says. "I mean I thought that maybe it would get a couple of hundred thousand hits. And really, when I first put that on the internet, I put it on my own website and just sent a link out to all my friends.

"They all saw it and thought, 'Oh, that's really cool' and then they sent it to all their friends because they thought it was so good to pass along, then all of a sudden it ended up in all the motorsports forums and all that stuff.

"All of a sudden I was getting the guys who do my website saying 'What is going on?' because in five days I had a million hits and they were just blown away. They couldn't figure out what was going on.

"It was actually starting to cost me a bunch of money because of the bandwidth for a video to get downloaded that many times it's just a very expensive thing. That's why we put it up on You Tube, still there were 12 million views of that video on my site alone."

The popularity of the first Gymkhana video has already spawned a sequel, Gymkhana Two: The Infomercial. The title is due to the videos role as the marketing centrepiece for a new range of DC clothing inspired by Block and his rally car. The 'Teamworks' collection uses the same colours, logos and design themes as his Monster Energy Drinks-sponsored rally car.

"We had a marketing reason to go out and do the second one; to go out and promote the team gear that goes along with myself and my car," he says. "At DC we were looking at ways to promote and market that stuff and the marketing director at DC basically said 'Hey, we've got all these ideas but you've got a proven formula right here that's going to get millions of views. Why would we go any other direction? Why don't we take that direction and try and do it better and different.' That's the basic premise to why we made Gymkhana Two."

And the Teamworks collection isn't the only way Block has been able to combine his careers as a rally driver and businessman. He has designed and developed DC's own driving shoe, complete with FIA certification.

"That's part of it but Travis Pastrana is one of our biggest name athletes and when he started racing rally I didn't want him in one of our competitors' shoes," he says. "So we had to make him a pair of shoes. I did all the research and all the testing and speced out that first shoe, called the Pro Spec 1.0. It's been a pretty successful shoe for us and it works incredibly well."

With his first hand experience in driving a rally car and the demands placed on a driver's foot Block was able to incorporate several new features into the Pro Spec 1.0. Given DC began providing specially designed shoes for skateboarders, the Pro Spec feature several elements from the very different sport including extra padding and a stronger sole.

It is a sign of just how passionate Block is with rallying. He admits he'd love to drive a World Rally Car but knows that he lacks the experience to compete on the world stage just yet. For him, any time he gets to spend in a rally car is well spent and he'll be doing it as long as he can.

"I don't really have any goals in rally I just enjoy being able to do some of the fun stuff I do in the car," he says. "Like doing some of the jump stuff and the stuff on the ski resorts and doing the Gymkhana stuff, I've had an amazing career in rally and it's been very, very fun."

Photo credits: Gymkhana One, Willian Knose; Gymkhana Two, Robert Kerian.

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