2015 was a season of both highs and lows for Hoonigan Racing Division’s Ken Block. He came into the year fresh off of a second overall finish in the 2014 Global Rallycross Championship (which he missed by only 5 points) and had punctuated the end of that season with a win in Las Vegas. Block capitalized on that good fortune and momentum and carried that into the 2015 GRC season, kicking things off in a big way with a win at the first race of the year.
Block’s first win of the season came at Ft. Lauderdale and it was a great way to set the tone for the year, as well as acted as a bit of a mission statement: Block had almost nabbed the championship in 2014 and he was back with a vengance to try and bring it home in 2015. He left Florida with the win and the points lead.
His next race weekend took him to a doubleheader in Daytona, where he came out of the second race of the weekend with a 2nd place podium finish and continued to build his points lead over the rest of the field. Block then went back-to-back with 1st place finishes in New River and the first race of a doubleheader weekend in Detroit. By this point Block had established a sizeable lead in the championship points race.
The second race in Detroit wasn’t as strong of a finish for Block, but he returned to the podium in Washington D.C. with a very hard-fought 3rd overall finish. However, from that point onward, the remainder of the calendar was a string of DNFs and back of pack finishes due to general bad luck, mechanical issues and vehicle damage sustained in racing incidents from other drivers—like during the final in Las Vegas where Block’s car was so badly damaged from being slammed into by fellow competitors that he was knocked out of the final midway through it.
While the season started with promise—and both Block and his Ford Fiesta ST RX43 displayed the requisite finesse and speed required to win—it ended in a disappointing way. Despite the hardships towards the end, Block’s initial points lead had been so great that he was actually able to retain the championship lead in the standings all the way through the first 10 of 12 rounds of racing.
For 2016, Block plans to continue to compete in rallycross, having hopefully left his bad luck back in 2015.
