Ken Block, 55, dies in snowmobile accident
Title says it all, prayers for his family.
January 3rd, 2023 at 5:54 AM ^
KB43 is a legend in the racing community and an absolute icon in the motor world. He’ll be missed. Condolences to his family.
January 3rd, 2023 at 7:13 AM ^
I was just introducing my kids to his videos a couple weeks ago and it blew their minds, but they’re exactly why this news isn’t surprising. A man can’t live like that and expect to grow old. 55 was a ripe old age for anyone like Ken Block.
January 3rd, 2023 at 7:16 AM ^
Just saw him at the Ojibwe Forest Rally in August.
We don’t know how long we have.
January 3rd, 2023 at 7:20 AM ^
Title doesn't say it all because I never heard of Ken Block before because I don't follow racing. Thank you posters for explaining. RIP.
January 3rd, 2023 at 8:52 AM ^
Ken Block was easily the most famous person behind any steering wheel for at least the last 4-5 years, if not more. This is a big loss for the racing/automotive world.
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:43 AM ^
Yet so many of us have never heard of him. At all. Not once. My immediate thought was, “which staffer/professor/admin from which part of the AD or university is this?”
to claim the “most famous behind any steering wheel” feels off. I’m not sure how else to say it but the OP should absolutely have identified this person as to their sport. He’s not even the most famous person in a snow vehicle accident in the last 24 hours as all my newsfeed says that’s actor Jeremy Renner.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:17 PM ^
I don't understand why people are upset the OP for his thread title and body copy. Do you need the OP to follow you around and spend the 10 seconds to type all nine keystrokes of Ken's name (space included) into search engines for you?
This fascination with titles, subject lines, etc. here is one of the weirdest things this blog has going... and there's a lot of weird here.
One of Ken Block's 10-year-old 'Gymkhana' videos has 113 million views. Just spending that 10 seconds typing it into Google, and his least-viewed Gymkhana video in the first Youtube results has 26 million views. Whether you like it or not, he was the biggest name in all of motorsports and it's actually impressive you've never heard of him.
I'm sure there's another battle to be waged with the Gods of Brevity somewhere on MGoBlog. I'll leave you to it.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:19 PM ^
Don't blame us for not knowing this person that has nothing to do with U-M sports and was still posted here for some unknown reason.
OP should have flagged it as OT at a minimum.
But go ahead and blame the board.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
A rally/gymkhana driver is more famous than the top NASCAR or Indy 500 drivers? More famous than Formula 1 champions Verstappen or Hamilton?
If so, that's got to be a function of his popular Youtube videos, because it wasn't too long ago that rally/gymkhana would have been regarded by the vast majority of racing fans to be down the food chain a bit.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:07 PM ^
I spend summers and falls in West Virginia, and the locals love their NASCAR. But like others here are saying, I've never heard of Ken Block. Nobody in WV ever mentioned his name, and I've heard dozens of names mentioned when they're talking NASCAR.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:29 PM ^
Yes, easily. Ken Block was internationally famous and recognized physically. He's raced globally in WRC, Rallycross, the X-Games, Pike's Peak, etc.
I already posted this, but his 10-year-old Gymkhana video has 113 million views.
I typed Jeff Gordon into Youtube and the most-viewed video with him on the first page had 1.2 million views.
I typed 'Nascar Daytona 500' into Youtube and the most-viewed video with him on the first page had 1.2 million views.
I typed 'Dale Earnhardt Jr.' into Youtube, and the most-viewed wasn't even of him directly. It's of his father's fatal crash. 6.5 million views.
The biggest Verstappen video I can find on the first page is 6-million something. Yes, I know who Max Verstappen, Charles LeClerc, Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen is. Just like I very clearly know who Ken Block is, despite having never watched a rally event in my life.
There may be more famous NASCAR drivers or Indy 500 drivers than Jeff Gordon, but those are the biggest I can think of (and I don't even know if either race anymore). I'm not going to spend more time looking and hunting, but there isn't anyone on the planet that put two hands on a steering wheel that more people laid their eyes on than Ken Block.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:21 PM ^
Cool stats. They still have nothing to do with Michigan athletics.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:50 PM ^
Knowing who Ken Block is, not all too surprising this is how he went out. RIP and prayers to those he left behind.
there isn't anyone on the planet that put two hands on a steering wheel that more people laid their eyes on than Ken Block.
YT views are a terrible way of making a determination that someone is the "most famous" or "most watched" anything, especially when F1 claims that the broadcast audience for the 2022 season alone was 1.55 billion.
Of course, just like 1.5 billion individuals didn't watch F1, neither did 113 million individuals watch that Ken Block video.
We can be sad and remember Ken Block without all the questionable superlatives.
January 3rd, 2023 at 3:31 PM ^
Ah. Okay. Thanks - I was concerned you wouldn't chime in with some attempted addendum. I was under the impression that I was one of the posters here that are "sad and remembering" Ken Block, rather than interjecting with how outrageous the OP's post was, how incomplete it is, OT it is, and that gosh-darnit I have zero clue who this guy is, 'cuz I'm a NASCAR guy myself.
Also - your credibility on this took a decent hit. You clearly don't follow F1 much because if you believe almost anything that F1 puts out, I have some ice to sell you, eskimo andrew.
So "questionable superlatives" are out, but lamentable negatives are in. Nothing says remembrance like some posthumous "who dats."
January 3rd, 2023 at 4:39 PM ^
Ken Block was most popular about 10+ years ago. Most people in the US couldn’t name an F1 driver other than Shumacher until people stopped leaving their homes and started binging Netflix.
Chances are if you didn’t own a JDM spec car or weren’t a Subaru sti or Mitsubishi evo fanboi, you didn’t know KB.
January 3rd, 2023 at 8:32 AM ^
Co founder of DC shoes. I’ve watched a lot of him on YouTube. RIP
January 3rd, 2023 at 8:50 AM ^
Saw this yesterday - insane news, but not that surprising if you've watched almost any of his Hoonigan videos. I agree with others - he definitely lived his life on the bleeding edge and it's hard to make a long run at it that way. If he had been more careful though, it's likely no one would know of him as well and he wouldn't have positively affected as many people.
This is just incredibly tragic news that's so sad even past what his family must be going through to lose him so suddenly around the Holiday season. He was a generational businessman and racer - hard to swallow how many people working for him that are being being affected by this news in the coming days. He had a huge footprint well beyond his family.
January 3rd, 2023 at 8:55 AM ^
*OT
RIP
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:44 AM ^
Yes! RIP certainly and the OT tag would have helped a lot.
January 3rd, 2023 at 9:08 AM ^
And Jeremy Renner is in the ICU following blunt force trauma to the chest.
January 3rd, 2023 at 9:48 AM ^
Gymkhana King. RIP.
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^
Yeah he made a boatload of money and some cool videos. But his act of foolishness has left behind a wife and three kids. As the close friend of one who lost his father in a hobbyist motor racing crash, I grieve for those left behind as a result of Ken Block's irresponsible actions.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
I remember his videos were THE thing to watch in high school circa 2009 on a very different YouTube.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:11 PM ^
This is shocking and saddening news. As a Subaru WRX driver myself, I became familiar with Ken as one of the principal competitors to the the Subaru Rally Team (especially after David Higgins & Craig Drew left SRT) and 2022 runner-up on the American Rally Association circuit. Also, the Hoonigan builds he drove were bonkers.
January 3rd, 2023 at 4:03 PM ^
Sad news. I was pretty involved in the snowboard scene from 2005-10 and during that time they released the DC mountain lab videos. He was, of course, a big part of what they were doing. RIP Ken.