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SPECIAL: Winnin’ Time for Ken Block
Some guys spend more time building their rally car than DC Shoes President and co-founder Ken Block has spent rallying. Yet Ken has won nine rallies in his first four seasons.
Bill Wood  | http://www.speedtv.com  |  Posted October 23, 2008   Los Angeles, Calif.
Block and Gelsomino won their first rally in Canada while testing the new Subaru body style last summer. (Andrew Harvey/flatovercrest.com photo)

Some guys spend more time building their rally car than DC Shoes President and co-founder Ken Block has spent rallying. Yet Ken has won nine rallies in his first four seasons of competition, seven in Rally America competition. Mind boggling! No amount of money can buy that talent. When Rally America gave Block its 2006 Rookie of the Year title they were warning us he was good, but this!? Ken and I talked about his rally passion after his win at the Lake Superior Performance Rally last weekend, the last round of the 2008 Rally America season.

“I had four events in a row that didn’t go so well,” Block said, “so it felt nice to have a successful weekend.”

It was a relatively rough year for Block and his co-driver Alex Gelsomino. Block won two of the first three Rally America events then it “all went to hell. I think I proved a couple times this year that I was the fastest out there I just couldn’t put it together. I look forward to making next year my year.”

It’s always been engrossing for me to watch someone with talent get fast, learn what’s called ‘winnin’ time,’ then learn how to win, win on purpose and win enough to become champion. Block is somewhere getting comfortable in the win on purpose neighborhood.

Learning how to win championships is a different kind of animal. His Subaru Rally Team USA teammate Travis Pastrana went through all the steps when he got into a rally car several years ago. After his third straight Rally America championship this season, we can say Pastrana knows winnin’ time and how to win enough to be champion. This year, for example, Travis won three of nine events – the same as Block – but Travis’ consistency – he was on the podium seven of nine times – earned him the championship before the last event in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Block needed his last win to move into second in the final standings.

Ken pointed to WRC champion Sebastian Loeb and Motocross GOAT Ricky Carmichael as examples of those in a different class. “Those people only come along once in a while. It’s hard to look at those kind of people and aspire to that when it’s such an unreachable level.”

Michael Schumacher was at that level, too: winning with domination. However, Travis, like many champions, has figured out winnin’ time, which can lead to consistency and titles without domination.

“I agree,” Block admitted. “I raced last year in New Zealand with a guy named Sam Murray. And Sam won the championship but didn’t win a race. He actually got a lot of flak for that. That’s one side of it.
Block and co-driver Alex Gelsomino after winning in Michigan last weekend. (Lars Gange/Subaru photo)

“The flip side of it is I race because I love to race. I love to be in the car. The feeling of being on a stage in a rally car is unlike anything I can get anywhere else. I just truly love it. When I go to an event I don’t think about second or third place. That’s something I accept if I’m not driving well or something happens. I want to enjoy what I’m doing and try to win every event I can because that’s what I enjoy.”

But what about driving for points and championships? “That isn’t the way I want to drive,” he told me. “For what I want to get out of life, going flat out in a rally car is what I want and why I’m there.”

That’s Ken Block. It’s the passion he used to help build an international Action Sports brand. It’s the passion he’s used to become an X Games medal winner and star. It’s the passion he’s used to make soaring jumps that are iconic on You Tube and elsewhere on the Internet. And it’s the passion that’s made him one of the top rally drivers in America in four years when hundreds have been there, had resources, and no wins to show for it.



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