I had heard about the Gymkhana video during my second deployment. I heard about it for a month or so…one of my soldiers came back from his vacation to the States and was just about exploding, ready to tell me all about this one video he saw while he was at home that involved Ken Block, a Subaru, and the kind of driving that he had never, ever seen anyone really try before. “Neat…so what kind of stunts did he do?” I asked. I was told that he drifted and did donuts. And I yawned…nothing against drifting or donuts, I love watching and performing both. But that was the big news this guy had to tell me?
Then I saw Gymkhana 1 for myself. I had to admit, while it was mostly drifting and donuts, there were some neat bits of skill involved and Block doing donuts around a guy on a Segway was pretty neat. And it ramped up from that moment forward…from dockyards and railyards to the streets of San Francisco, from Subarus to Fords, and even a driving exhibition with James May in the passenger seat and Ricky Carmichael flying nearby, if there is one thing you truly can say about Block, it is that the man knows how to make anti-social driving brutally entertaining.
Over the course of ten Gymkhana videos, he’s performed some stunts that have become absolutely legendary, and you have to wonder just what the driver himself thinks about what he’s done in the name of automotive performance (and YouTube clicks). Surely, we do…so without any more words, here’s Ken Block’s top eleven picks for his favorite tricks…so far!
