This could be the last time

It only took the second day of 2023 to remind us just how fragile life is.

I was watching the Monday Night Football game between the Cincinnati Bengals versus the Buffalo Bills. Midway through the first quarter, Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapse on the field after a play. Medical personnel performed CPR for seemingly 15 minutes. Hamlin left the field in an ambulance, which is something I’ve never seen before in all my years of watching the NFL. After much hemming and hawing from the league offices, the game was rightfully postponed. The players and football fans caring only about the well-being of Hamlin.

Found out this morning that he suffered a cardiac arrest, and is still in critical condition at a Cincinnati hospital. I join everyone else in praying heavily for the man.

During the hubbub of last evening, I received the tragic news of Ken Block’s passing. In an apparent snowmobile accident, it seems Ken went out the way he would’ve wanted - shredding on a machine and having loads of fun. Block was an enormous figure in the automotive game, leveraging the money he made from founding DC Shoes to do all the rad stuff he wanted: rallying, gymkhana, Youtube channels, building cool cars, to name just a few. Ken lived a life of a true petrol-head, inspiring and entertaining millions.

A hearty rest in peace to the Head Hoonigan in Charge.

Tell people important in your life you love them. Be sure to have a bit of fun every single day. Because the world will keep reminding us that there might not be a next time. Take care.

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Hang them up!

Ken Block's Gymkhana Five

Ever since the first Gymkhana, I’ve been a fan of Ken Block’s video brand of rally car driving acrobatics. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found out that the fifth iteration of the series will be shot in the streets of my lovely hometown, San Francisco. The hilly and twisty roads of the city coupled with world renowned landmarks makes for the perfect canvas for Block to perform his technical car handling ballet with a rally car. Doing burnouts and massive drifts on such epic San Francisco locations like the Bay Bridge, Financial district, and Twin Peaks is something us regular car enthusiasts can only dream about. 

The reason I am a big fan of the Gymkhana series is that it helps introduce/promote the rally form of motorsport to the American public. Rally cars and the World Rally Championship (WRC) over in the Europe has been one of my favorite racing discipline. Just the sheer variety of terrain the rally cars has to traverse and the abuse it is designed to take is simply magnificence in engineering. Unlike most other forms of racing, WRC features race cars based largely on road cars you can buy. The greatest examples of this is perhaps the Subaru Impreza STi, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, and the original Audi Quattro. These cars were essentially homologation road going models of the same rally cars campaigning in WRC. The kind of car Ken Block is using to zip through San Francisco with? You can buy one. Today - and that is absolutely magic. 

Unfortunately in the land of left turn racing, rally car is something many Americans are unfamiliar with. If it was not for racing games such as Gran Turismo introducing it to us and making us desire these type of cars, automakers wouldn’t even make them available to the American market (it wasn’t until 2003 before STi and Evos finally arrived to our shores, while the two have been sold in other markets for a decade.) What I hope ultimately happens with these Gymkhana videos is spread the rally motorsport discipline throughout America. It would be nice to see actual rally events in the States (and not just the X-Games.) The popularity will then push automakers to make road going rally type cars for people to purchase (that Ford Fiesta Ken Block is driving can NOT currently be bought in the turbo four wheel drive form). As a car enthusiast living in the U.S. that loves rally cars, this reality would be awesome. 

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