Block Scores First Overall Victory at Ojibwe, Extends Championship Lead
- masonrunkel
- 5 hours ago
- 13 min read
(Bemidji, Minn., September 1, 2026) — Lia Block earned her first overall national rally victory at the Ojibwe Forests Rally, August 28–29, on the sandy forest roads of northern Minnesota.
In so doing, the 19-year-old daughter of the late great Ken Block solidified her lead in the 2026 American Rally Association (ARA) National Championship and again secured a prominent place for herself in stage rally history. Block is now not only the youngest ever ARA National Champion—having taken the 2023 Open Two-Wheel-Drive (O2WD) class title at just 16—she’s also believed to be the first and only woman ever to have won a U.S. national rally overall, according to all available records.
Joined by experienced co-driver Alex Gelsomino in the Rockstar Energy-backed Block House Racing Hyundai i20 N Rally2, Block had been challenging for her first win since the start of the year, narrowly missing victory at the season-opening Sno*Drift Rally when last-stage mechanical troubles struck and persevering through various misfortunes to score three consecutive podium finishes before finally breaking through in Minnesota.
With two rounds remaining the 2026 ARA National Championship season, Block extended her lead from two points to 21 over her closest rival, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team’s (TGR-WRT) Seth Quintero who, after winning the previous two rallies overall, was taken out of contention by suspension damage on day one at Ojibwe.
With a history dating back more than 40 years, Ojibwe is frequently compared to Rally Finland for its fast, flowing stages that thread through deep forests and feature undulations and crests that turn into high-flying jumps at speed.
The 48-car field was the largest Ojibwe had seen in years , headed by Block, Quintero and multi-time ARA Limited Four-Wheel-Drive (L4WD) class champion Javier Olivares in his RC2-class Ford Fiesta Rally2. Right behind them was a fraught battle amongst seven O2WD competitors—seasoned veterans and rising stars both—all capable of leaving Ojibwe with the class championship lead.
Crashes, car fires, mechanical failures, and penalties ran rife across the 16-stage, 125.30-mile itinerary, but Ojibwe proved punishing and rewarding in equal measure, as multiple first-time winners mounted the top step of the podium.
Block Rebounds From Difficult Colorado Luck
After a deeply frustrating previous round at Rally Colorado, where she had to overcome three tire punctures to salvage a second-place overall finish—her third straight podium and second consecutive ARA Power Stage win—Block entered Ojibwe among the favorites. But with both Block and Quintero competing at Ojibwe for the first time and Block’s championship lead at just two points, anything could happen.
Travis Pastrana had originally been slated to join the overall battle in the Open Four-Wheel-Drive (O4WD) Subaru WRX ARA25 in pursuit of what would be a record-setting ninth Ojibwe victory, but he withdrew after suffering a leg injury in the week leading up to the rally. That left Block’s primary competition in RC2 as Quintero and co-driver Topi Luhtinen, the Element Rallysport Ford Fiesta Rally2 of Javier Olivares and Leah Brisset, and the Mitsubishi Mirage of Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell and co-driver Michael Hordijk.
Block immediately established herself at the front, taking the SS1 win by a commanding 16.7 seconds over Quintero, with Olivares another 17.4 seconds back in third.
Unfortunately for Quintero, he clipped a rock early on SS2 and damaged a control arm on the GR Corolla Rally RC2. Unable to get the car clear of the stage before the second running, Quintero and Luhtinen were forced to retire from Friday’s competition and wait until Saturday to rejoin.
At the beginning of Saturday, Block led the rally by just over a minute. Although Quintero returned to competition, he was no longer a threat for the overall victory, leaving Block to manage her advantage over Olivares while navigating Ojibwe’s attrition-heavy final day. She did exactly that, bringing the Hyundai home with a 2:01.8 winning margin to earn her historic first overall rally victory.
“It feels like it’s been coming for a long time,” Block said. “We’ve put our heads down the last couple of races and made some really, really good improvements, so I’m really happy to be here, especially at a very difficult rally like Ojibwe.
“We’ve seen multiple competitors get caught out by it. The conditions are so unpredictable, especially in the second half, so I’m happy we survived and crossed the finish first with a two-minute lead. The team has done an incredible job all year, so the hard work is really finally paying off.
“It feels really good to get the championship back under control, especially with the punctures and stuff that were kind of out of our hands the past couple of rallies. We were really lucky to keep it where it was and maximize points as much as we could. I’m happy to finally be standing on the top step and also get a good chunk of points.”
Block also extended her championship lead over Quintero from just two points to 21. Even with ARA regulations scoring only a team’s top six performances, Block carries a cushion into the final two rounds of the season.
Second overall, Olivares matched his career-best National finish from the 2023 Ojibwe Forests Rally after a clean, well-fought performance in his first event with Brisset serving as co-driver.
One of the weekend’s standout results came from Danny Shalev and Glen Ray, who put their Argonaut Motor Club O2WD Peugeot 208 Rally4 on the overall podium in third.
Vivian Campbell also earned his first RC2 podium alongside co-driver Michael Hordijk, completing his first rally finish of the 2026 season as he continues to learn the Mitsubishi Mirage R5.
While Quintero wasn’t on the podium at the end of the rally, he made the most of his Saturday restart, winning multiple forest stages before taking the ARA Power Stage and its maximum five championship points.
“I think Lia is everybody’s little sister, so to see her do that is awesome,” Quintero said. “She’s been working hard at it for a very, very long time and came close a few times. I think we’re all stoked for her. She deserved it.
“It was nice to grab those stage wins and then the Power Stage win, and the GR Corolla feels better than ever. Obviously, the championship is a little bit out of reach right now. It’s not mathematically impossible, but Lia’s driving so well that it kind of feels impossible. I’m going to do what I can. Never say no, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Shalev Takes O2WD Championship Lead with First Class Victory
With seven of the 11 Open Two-Wheel-Drive (O2WD) entries capable of leaving Ojibwe with the National Championship lead, the class was home to one of the hardest-fought—and most sensationally sideways—battles of the 2026 season so far.
After a season of the usual frontrunners facing intermittent issues and other teams finding solid consistency, the top five teams in the championship entered at Ojibwe were separated by just nine points heading into the event. With only two rounds remaining after Ojibwe, every stage mile would be important to the championship outcome.
Matthew Nykanen and William Ross returned after their car-totaling crash at Rally Colorado, this time learning a new car in a River City Rally (RCR) Lexus IS350. Mika Block entered his first National rally, while the Tuthill Porsche 911 of Jared Della Valle and Grzegorz Dorman made its stateside stage-rally debut.
Right from the start, Danny Shalev and Glen Ray took the lead, winning SS1 by 3.7 seconds in their Argonaut Motor Club Peugeot 208 Rally4 over Michael Hooper and Michael Farrow’s RCR Lexus IS350. Multi-time O2WD Champions Seamus Burke and Martin Brady sat third in their Mk2 Ford Escort.
On SS2, Hooper and Farrow took the lead while the second Argonaut Motor Club Peugeot of William Tung and Michael Szewczyk moved into second, with Irishmen Burke and Brady holding third.
Saturday brought drastic changes in position, however, and not in the way the frontrunners would have wanted. Early in the day, penalties were handed down to 17 competitors for Quiet Zone violations—infractions of varying severity for failing to adhere to strict ARA rules mandating noise, speed, and driving etiquette while transiting designated sections of public roads—during Friday’s competition, including both RCR Lexus entries. Hooper received 90 seconds of penalties, while Nykanen was handed four minutes of penalty time.
The standings were shaken up further when Burke and Brady suffered an off and retired on SS8, leaving the two Argonaut Motor Club Peugeots in a close battle for the lead. Tung held the advantage by just 1.2 seconds at the end of Saturday’s first loop.
Shalev responded with a stage win on SS11, moving into the lead by 5.6 seconds, and held Tung off through the remainder of the rally to take his first O2WD victory by just 8.3 seconds. The result also put Shalev and Ray on the overall podium—a notable feat for an O2WD team—and earned the crew the Ken Block 43VER Award presented by 43i, recognizing the team that best embodies Ken Block’s “Ain’t Care” attitude, press-on-regardless mindset, and commitment throughout the rally.
Shalev and Tung also earned valuable points toward the Stellantis Motorsport Rally Cup North America, a Peugeot 208 Rally4-only championship spanning selected ARA and Canadian Rally Championship events and offering competitors a pathway toward higher-level international rally competition.
The RCR cars still managed strong finishes, with Hooper and Farrow taking third in O2WD and Nykanen and Ross fourth in their first outing in the Lexus IS350. Nykanen also won the class Power Stage, earning an additional three O2WD championship points.
Shalev leaves Ojibwe with 70 points and an 11-point championship lead over second-place Hooper, while Nicholas Tippman sits third with 54 points.
In Limited Two-Wheel-Drive (L2WD), there was an early battle between the 2000 BMW 323i of Mike Erickson and Danny Norkus and championship leaders Henry Tabor and Dylan Hooker in their 2015 Ford Fiesta.
As Friday went on, however, Tabor found his footing and ended the day with a 28-second lead over Erickson.
Saturday extended that advantage through both Tabor’s pace and a Quiet Zone penalty for Erickson, which dropped the BMW to third behind the RCR Lexus IS250 of Ryan McGrath and Crystina Coats.
In the end, Tabor and Hooker took the class victory and Power Stage win, with McGrath and Coats second and Erickson and Norkus third. Tabor leaves Ojibwe leading the L2WD championship with 93 points over McGrath’s 77, while John Barnett sits third with 68.
Pysklyvets Impresses with LN4 Victory
ARA newcomers Standard Energy Racing earned their first class victory in National competition at Ojibwe, with the Ukranian duo of Nick Pysklyvets and co-driver Roman Romanchuk taking the LN4 win in their Limited Four-Wheel-Drive (L4WD) 2015 Subaru WRX STI. LN4 combines L4WD and Naturally Aspirated Four-Wheel-Drive (NA4WD) competitors into a single National Championship class.
Initially, Richo Healey and Michelle Miller looked like the class frontrunners in their Eagle Rock Racing (ERR) Ford Fiesta Rally3 EVO. After taking their first class victory at Rally Colorado, they shot into the Ojibwe lead by 15.9 seconds over Pysklyvets and continued to extend the gap from there.
By the end of Friday’s competition, Healey led the class by more than two minutes over Pysklyvets, with Madelyn Tabor and co-driver Naila Deen third in their Steven Redd Racing Ford Fiesta Rally3.
Aoife Raftery and Hannah McKillop were among the favorites to win the class coming into the rally in their DirtFish Women in Motorsport-backed Fiesta Rally3, but the Irish pair suffered damage on SS1 that forced them to retire from Friday’s competition and return Saturday.
The ERR car carried its lead into Saturday’s first loop, but Healey and Miller’s hopes literally went up in smoke when a fire started under the hood on SS8. The pair pulled over to extinguish it on stage and were forced to retire from the event.
From there, Pysklyvets and Romanchuk held the lead through the remainder of the rally to take Standard Energy Racing’s first National class victory. Tabor and Deen finished second, while Eliza Coleman and Ryan Scott took third in their NA4WD 2005 Subaru Impreza.
“I’m excited. We finished, and that’s our goal at every rally: just finish, just finish, just finish,” Pysklyvets said. “And thanks to Roman, because he’s always telling me, ‘Go, go, go, flat out!’ He pushes me all the time.
“Everything is new for us. This is our first time here, and actually the whole season has been a first time. Every rally is the first time, with different types of roads. Everything is different and everything is new for us, but I’m so happy.
“I hope this isn’t the last podium. We’ll try to figure out the new car more at the next event. Thank you very much to all the volunteers, marshals, and ARA. We’ll see you at Overmountain [Rally Tennessee] for sure.”
Raftery and McKillop finished fourth after returning Saturday, winning every stage they contested that day, including the Power Stage. Raftery now leads the LN4 Championship with 72 points, ahead of Mark Piatkowski and Madelyn Tabor, who are tied for second with 62, while Pysklyvets and Travis Pastrana sit on 59 points.
The next round, the penultimate of the eight-race ARA National Championship, is Overmountain Rally Tennessee, taking place September 17-19.
Lord and Larson Earn First Victory at Ojibwe
Alongside the National Championship fight at Ojibwe, a Super Regional event spanning the same two-day itinerary, minus the Power Stage, saw an attrition-filled battle of endurance play out across 15 stages and 117.44 stage miles. Eighteen competitors entered, but only 10 finished.
Far and away the fastest Regional entry on day one, multi-time L4WD National Championship-winning co-driver KJ Miller and Morgan Ward, who came all the way from Australia to serve as navigator alongside Miller, soared into the overall lead in the “Lady of the Lake,” their L4WD 2004 Subaru WRX STI that Miller bought after it was fished out of Shuckhart Lake following an off at Ojibwe by its previous owner in 2022.
Having been rebuilt and campaigned occasionally by Miller ever since, this was his first time bringing the car back to the rally that made it infamous.
By the end of day one, Miller and Ward didn’t just lead the Regional rally by more than seven minutes, they were ahead of every National entry except the RC2 cars of Lia Block and Javier Olivares, the latter of whom Miller regularly co-drives for in National Championship competition.
Unfortunately, the dream didn’t last through Saturday’s action. On SS10, a failure in the signal wire between the ECU and alternator caused the car to stop charging, eventually draining the battery and bringing the Lady of the Lake to a stop on stage.
“It was just one tiny little wire that decided it didn’t want to send power to the alternator anymore,” Miller said. “It ended up actually being a really simple fix once we figured out what it was, but we lost battery and just came to a stop on stage. It was pretty lame.”
Photo by Cooper Page
Once the issue was repaired, Miller and Ward returned for the Sanford Center Super Specials later in the day.
“We came out and had a fair bit of fun,” Miller said. “We got in a little bit of trouble, but I think it was worth it.”
Miller was also feeling the effects of one of Ojibwe’s bigger jumps after the rally. A lingering back injury from a RallySprint three years earlier rarely bothers him, he said, “until you take a jump at 110 miles an hour and fly 170 feet through the air.”
Miller wasn’t the first, nor the last, to suffer frustration from attrition in the Regional rally. On SS1, Central Regional Championship leaders Peter Farrow and Jackson Sedivy had an off in their L4WD 2002 Subaru Impreza that left them deep in the woods and forced their retirement from the event.
James Randall and Andrew Rausch’s L4WD 2015 Subaru WRX were favored to take the championship lead with a strong finish, but an off on SS4 cut their hopes similarly short. By the end of Friday’s action, five other competitors had retired from the day’s competition, including all but one of the two-wheel-drive entries.
Stephen and daughter Katie Gingras took over the lead of the Regional competition in their NA4WD 1994 Subaru Impreza “3.0RS.” While eight Regional entries were hit with Quiet Zone penalties similar to those handed out in the National field, Gingras’ pace would have put him in the lead regardless. Heading into the final loop, Zachery Lord and Garrett Larson held second in their O4WD 2001 Subaru Impreza, while Tyler Matalas and Dustin Sharkozy sat third in their NA4WD 1995 Subaru Impreza LX.
Unfortunately, on SS12, while leading the rally by more than three minutes, Gingras clipped the inside of a corner and rolled the car onto its side, forcing a retirement from the event.
Lord and Larson moved into the lead and, after completing the two Sanford Center Super Specials, stood atop the overall Regional podium for their first victory.
Matalas took second overall and first in NA4WD. Provisional results initially placed Matt and Jacqueline James third overall and second in NA4WD before an exclusion for servicing their car in a control zone the previous day.
Under the current provisional classification, the exclusion moves the L2WD 1994 Volkswagen Golf of Greg Haley and Max Sutton into third overall, while Richard and Greg Donovan’s 1997 Subaru Impreza moves into second in NA4WD.
Regional results remain provisional following a protest by an entrant against an action taken by the Clerk of the Course. A hearing is scheduled for the coming week.
Despite 17 minutes of Quiet Zone penalties, Scott and Elizabeth Crouch won L4WD in their 2002 Subaru WRX. Second went to Josh and Danielle Kemp in their 2004 Subaru WRX, who received the same total penalty, while Joseph and Chris Schafer finished third in class in their 2003 Subaru WRX.
While Haley and Sutton took the L2WD win, Brie Lucio and Cindi Carlson finished second in their 2017 Ford Fiesta, with Matthew and Richard Shinn third in their 2002 Ford Focus. Both Ford crews had retired on Friday before rejoining Saturday.
Finally, in regional O2WD, both the rear-wheel-drive-converted 1998 Subaru Impreza of Travis Mattonen and Anikka Nykanen and the 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle of Doug Leibman and Kevin Schatz suffered offs on Friday, with the Beetle rolling over. Both crews rejoined Saturday, but only Leibman and Schatz completed the second day to take the class win as the lone finishers.
Notably, Ojibwe marks Leibman’s first ARA class victory and moves him into the Central Regional O2WD Championship lead by one point over Sean Burke, who was absent from the event.
The next Central Regional Championship round will be the Lake Superior Performance Rally, October 9–10 in Marquette, Michigan, before the season concludes at Show-Me Rally on November 7.
ARA STRYKER Challenge Takes Next Steps at Ojibwe
Ojibwe also marked the second round where the ARA STRYKER Challenge has joined the series.
Competing on the same stages but scored separately as an adjacent series, the STRYKER RX1 continued development at Ojibwe, with the likes of Lucy Block, “Texas” Dave Carapetyan, and company founder Cole Powelson putting it through its paces.
The cars continued to gain data and pace on stage as both STRYKER and the ARA work to evolve the series.
Complete Ojibwe Forests Rally results: https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/event-results
To see images for Ojibwe Forests Rally - visit the 2026 Ojibwe Forests Rally on Apexiel
~Mason Runkel for the ARA
