The Gymkhana Files S1:E7

At The Peak

Ken Block and his team of Hoonigans have built a viral video empire out of a simple concept. Driver. Car. Location. No limits. The result has been 9 Gymkhana films that have earned over 500million views on YouTube alone, won numerous ad awards for best branded content, and garnered millions of reposts, parodies, and tributes online. With GymkhanaTEN, the team wants to make their greatest film ever - with 5 cars, 5 different locations, and a brand new, radically different, custom built vehicle the world has never seen. However, before any of that can even get started

The Motor City

There is a reason it's called the Motor City. The home of American automotive, Detroit makes perfect sense as a Gymkhana location. With wide swathes of urban decay next door to a booming downtown, it paints a unique portrait of an American city. In the works for over 7 years, Ken & co have wanted to film a Gymkhana in Detroit since 2010, and finally get the opportunity. As the first shoot of GymkhanaTEN, the stakes here are incredibly high. This city will set the momentum for the rest of the year long project, so the team wants to get out the gate first.

In the Dirt

With a successful, if anticlimactic, ending to the first segment of GymkhanaTEN, Ken flies off to Loheac, France to continue his attempt to win a championship in the World Rallycross Championship, also known as WorldRX. A shoulder-to-shoulder, full contact circuit racing sport, rallycross takes the mixed surfaces and hot-hatch style cars of rally racing and puts it in an arena for fans to watch. One of the fastest growing motorsports, it has the eyes of manufacturers and fans alike. With the might of Ford behind them, Ken and second driver Andreas Bakkerud, a young, ...

It All Falls Apart

For the second segment of GymkhanaTEN, Ken and team wanted to do something new and original, something that had never been seen before. You can't kickflip a car - but you might be able to grind it - with that idea translated over from skateboarding, the team takes the tires off a 1991 Ford Escort Cosworth RS to try something admittedly new to them. In an old tire factory in an industrial part of Los Angeles called South Gate, the Hoonigan team readies their wildest idea yet - an entire segment solely on rims. The concept itself dates back to a previous Gymkhana, ...

It Is What It Is

While Los Angeles is now behind them, the team splinters and communication grinds to a halt. Brian heads back to Hoonigan Media Machine, continuing to prep GymkhanaTEN, while Ken heads back to racing. After the lackluster results the team has seen in the first half of the season - Ken faces a difficult decision about his future in the World Rallycross Championship, and an unexpected announcement to the team. While those conversations weigh heavily on Ken, Brian heads halfway around the world to Sweden to ensure that the team is better prepared for the next segment.

On Thin Ice

With the specter of Los Angeles hanging over them - Ken, Brian & co. head to Luleå, Sweden to film their most challenging segment yet. A custom course cut out of the snow on a frozen ice lake, with only 3 hours of daylight and -30 degree Fahrenheit weather, the filming side must go off without a hitch in order for them to leave the Arctic with anything resembling a segment. Ken arrives fresh from the end of the WorldRX season, with no distractions and a focus on the success of GymkhanaTEN. He brings with him Oliver Solberg, the son of his WorldRX rival Petter Solberg ...

Where It All Began

A long time ago, before Ken was a factory driver, before he was racing for world championships, he was a rookie known for a few national wins but completely unproven on the world stage. Ken, and the Monster World Rally team (as it was known back then) knew they needed to test their skills on the highest level, and so they arrived for the first time ever in 2007 at the World Rally Championship in Guanajuato, Mexico. An extremely successful first race here at Guanajuato legitimized Ken as a world level driver, and paved the way for the last decade of racing and viral ...