The team was founded by Ken Block at the start of 2010 under the name Monster World Rally Team, with the express purpose of giving Block a platform to compete at world championship level. Monster Energy served as title sponsor, and the operation ran a 2011-specification Ford Fiesta RS WRC for Block and co-driver Alex Gelsomino at selected WRC events.
In 2013 the team was rebranded as the Hoonigan Racing Division. The name Hoonigan is a portmanteau of hoon — Australian English slang for a reckless or anti-social driver — and the word hooligan, a combination that captured the freewheeling, stunt-adjacent identity Block cultivated through his Gymkhana video series.
Block's results in the Global RallyCross Championship showed consistent improvement season over season: a fifth-place championship finish in 2012 gave way to third in 2013 and second in 2014, before dropping to seventh in 2015 as competition intensified. In the FIA World Rallycross Championship, Block claimed a third-place result and a fourth-place finish in 2014.
From 2016, Block competed full-time in the FIA World Rallycross Championship. He was joined by Norwegian driver Andreas Bakkerud, giving the team two entries. Both drivers piloted Ford Focus RS machinery that was built and prepared by M-Sport, the British motorsport engineering company responsible for building Fiesta-based cars across numerous rally and rallycross programmes. The partnership with M-Sport gave the Hoonigan entry technical parity with factory-level resources.
The team's participation in the WRC had always been selective rather than a full-season campaign. Block's profile in rally was maintained partly through high-production Gymkhana films and special stage appearances at individual WRC events rather than a championship assault.
On 4 September 2017, Ford Performance and the Hoonigan Racing Division jointly announced their withdrawal from the FIA World Rallycross Championship following the conclusion of that season. The decision reflected shifting priorities at Ford Performance and the commercial realities of maintaining a full-time international rallycross programme.
After the withdrawal from world-level competition, Block continued rallying through the American Rally Association, competing in domestic events. He remained one of the most visible rally drivers globally through continued content output and appearance events.
In September 2024, the Hoonigan brand filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a need to restructure finances and support long-term growth. The company successfully exited bankruptcy on 2 December 2024.
The Hoonigan Racing Division operated at a unique intersection of motorsport competition and automotive entertainment. While its championship results were solid rather than dominant — Block never won a rallycross championship title during the team's run — its cultural reach extended far beyond podium finishes. The Gymkhana video series, which showcased Ken Block driving modified Hoonigan vehicles through closed industrial environments in choreographed sequences, accumulated hundreds of millions of views and introduced a generation of fans to the spectacle of rally-derived car control.
The team helped normalise the crossover between performance content creation and mainstream motorsport competition, influencing how manufacturers and teams approach digital audience engagement. Ford's partnership with Hoonigan gave the Focus RS and Fiesta RS WRC platforms an outsized online presence that complemented their conventional racing campaigns.
The loss of Ken Block in January 2023, following a snowmobile accident, brought an additional dimension of finality to the Hoonigan Racing Division's story. Block had been the creative engine behind everything the team represented, and his death preceded the broader financial difficulties that led to the 2024 bankruptcy filing.