Quintero Takes First Win as Block Assumes Championship Lead at Southern Ohio Forest Rally
- masonrunkel
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
(Chillicothe, Ohio, June 15, 2026) Seth Quintero of TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team (TGR-WRT) claimed his first-ever American Rally Association (ARA) National Championship victory alongside co-driver Topi Luhtinen at the Southern Ohio Forest Rally (SOFR), held June 11-13 on the fast and flowing roads of Ohio's Shawnee and Zaleski State Forests.
The seventh running of SOFR as an ARA National round arrived at a pivotal moment in what has become one of the championship's most competitive seasons in recent memory. With points leader Travis Pastrana absent due to prior commitments, the door was opened for multiple rising ARA stars to fight for a first-time win and further shake up an already unpredictable title fight.
68 teams tackled 120 competition miles across 20 stages, as Quintero, Lia Block, Patrick Gruszka, and several other rising contenders looked to capitalize on the opportunity. By the end of the weekend, Quintero had secured the breakthrough victory, while the battle for podium positions and championship points remained fierce throughout the field.
Combining the fan-favorite Yoctangee Park Super Special Stages, mixed gravel and tarmac roads, tight class battles, and major championship implications, the 2026 Southern Ohio Forest Rally delivered another defining moment to close the first half of the ARA National Championship season.
Quintero Dominates Friday, Block Battles Back Saturday
Kicking off in traditional fashion, fans gathered at the Yoctangee Park Super Special for the first two stages of SOFR on Thursday night, first getting to see the cars up close at Parc Exposé before watching the field race through the 0.96-mile tarmac stage, culminating in a high-speed jump just before the finish.
Running on gravel tires for the just-under-two-mile opening day of competition, Toyota driver Quintero found himself seventh overall after Thursday’s action, but just seven seconds off rally leaders Lia Block and Alex Gelsomino in the Rockstar Energy-backed Blockhouse Racing Hyundai i20 N Rally2. Pat Gruszka and Florian Barral sat second in the Green APU-sponsored i20 Rally2, while the reigning Mexican champion, 17-yearold Carlos García and co-driver Jaime Zapata sat third in their American Rally debut in a Škoda Fabia R5 Evo.
When the rally started in earnest Friday on the smooth gravel and tarmac forest stages, Quintero—who also races for Toyota in the FIA World Rally Raid Championship (W2RC) and was riding high after becoming the W2RC’s youngest-ever Ultimate-class winner in Argentina just a week before—proved why he belongs in the ARA, taking eight straight stage wins to lock out the day and build a 46.9-second lead over Block.
Along the way, García retired after an off on SS3 but returned to the stages later in the day, while Gruszka clipped a culvert on SS5, violently flipping his car multiple times and retiring from the event. By the second half of the day, Aoife Raftery and Hannah McKillop had moved into third overall in their Limited Four-Wheel-Drive (L4WD) DirtFish Women in Motorsport-backed Ford Fiesta Rally3, with multi-time Mexican National Champion Ricardo Cordero and co-driver Marco Hernandez’s 2019 Citroën C3 R5 just 7.5 seconds behind them in fourth.
Saturday, after a late night of reviewing video and revising pace notes with her co-driver, Block was back in the fight with a vengeance. She won SS11 and SS12 to close the gap by more than 11 seconds, then continued to eat into Quintero’s lead when a mechanical issue forced him to run SS13 and part of SS14 in just one gear. Heading into the second loop of stages, Block was just 12.2 seconds off the lead.
With a tie on SS16 and three more stage wins for Block, the gap was reduced to just 10.3 seconds heading into the rally-ending—and bonus-points-paying—ARA Power Stage.
While Block claimed her first overall ARA Power Stage win for five extra championship points, Quintero held on to win by 9.4 seconds, scoring his first ARA National victory and becoming the fourth different winner in the 2026 championship in as many events.
“This year has been a lot of fun,” Quintero said. “We’ve had quite a few podiums in a my last few races, so to get a W2RC win last week in Argentina and then get a win here is something really special.
“I said it at the very beginning, I thought Lia was the one to watch. Luckily, I was able to do a really good job [Friday], felt comfortable, and had a bit of a gap today that unfortunately got tossed away after the second stage. After that, I just tried to match her pace. I knew that our pace was close, and I didn’t need to go ten-tenths unless I really needed it.
“That’s not easy to do in the slightest. She’s flying, so I did what I could to keep it close and not throw it away.”
While they didn’t end up on top at SOFR, Block and Gelsomino now take the overall championship lead, along with more confidence, into next month’s Rally Colorado.
“Unfortunately, [Friday], we struggled a little bit with confidence and understanding the grip,” Gelsomino said. “These stages are just so different from anything else we’ve run in North America. We regrouped, spent four hours watching the recce videos from today’s stages last night, slept very little, but it paid off.
“We knew that unless Seth and Topi had a problem, we weren’t going to win this rally, but we really wanted to win the Power Stage, and we did. More importantly, we’re leaving here leading the championship, Lia and I. That was the goal at the start of the weekend.”
“I’m definitely very disappointed in myself,” Block said. “We had a really, really good comeback today, but the way I wrote my notes, I was just not comfortable on the first day, and that really hurt us.
“We did a big push [Saturday]. I was comfortable, I had no big moments, I was on the road, and we are looking at a championship here. I’m happy that I closed it in so much at the end. Under nine seconds is pretty crazy coming from 45 seconds back at the end of day two. There’s a lot to learn from losing, not as much from winning.
“I’m not going to let that happen again.”
With Quintero and Block finishing first and second on both the overall and RC2-class podiums, Cordero and Hernandez completed both podiums after overtaking Raftery while she managed a brake issue in the late stages of the rally.
“I’m really happy because the team worked a lot for it,” Cordero said. “Mostly it’s their win because the car was perfect. We were fighting, not quite at the top, but I think we need more practice and more rallies in the U.S. You guys do things really different than we do in Mexico, but I think I can come back because I really like how you guys do things here.”
While not on the podium, García managed top-three finishes on multiple stages in his first rally with the ARA, and he hopes be back for more in the future.
“We’re trying to bring him here,” Cordero said of the teenaged García. “I think he is happy with the times, so we’re trying to convince him to go to Colorado. We’re almost there, but I’m pretty sure he will be back here. If not in Colorado, then at the next race.”
Block now leads the ARA National Championship with 53 points over Quintero with 47 and Alastair Scully with 42, while former championship leader Pastrana drops to fourth with 38.
Raftery Overcomes Nearly Catastrophic Damage for First LN4 Win
With Travis Pastrana and co-driver Rhianon Gelsomino absent, the LN4 class, which combines Limited Four-Wheel-Drive (L4WD) and Naturally Aspirated Four-Wheel-Drive (NA4WD), was dominated by the nimble Rally3 cars on SOFR’s tight forest roads.
With five Rally3 cars among the nine entries, the class continued its growth, offering a more accessible all-wheel-drive FIA-homologated platform than the championship-leading Rally2 cars while competing in L4WD at ARA events.
Right from the start, Raftery and McKillop’s Element Rallysport Fiesta Rally3 was on a tear, coming off the Super Special stages 3.4 seconds in the lead and expanding that advantage to nearly two minutes by the end of Friday’s first loop.
Holding second in the championship heading into the event, Mark Piatkowski returned to his familiar NA4WD 1999 Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS and ran as high as third in class before transmission trouble forced him to retire Friday and make repairs overnight before re-entering Saturday.
2024 L2WD National Champions Richo Healey and Michelle Miller impressed by immediately taking second in their first event with an Eagle Rock Racing (ERR) Ford Fiesta Rally3 Evo, maintaining their pace through Friday before an off on Saturday’s first stage ended their promising run.
Healey and Miller’s incident promoted the other ERR entry of Roberto Yglesias and Steven Harrell to second, and the Steven Redd Racing Ford Fiesta Rally3 of Madelyn Tabor and Sophia McKee into third.
Raftery and McKillop’s hope for an overall podium nearly ended in disaster at the start of Saturday afternoon, when they clipped a concrete culvert at the edge of the road with their left front, obliterating the brake rotor, severing a brake line, and causing significant suspension damage.
They pair arrived at the start of SS16 with their left front askew, smoke rising from the wheel well, and hot brake fluid draining on the ground. The two Irishwomen immediately went to work, removing the wheel, plugging the leaking brake line, and adding fluid, before refitting the wheel and just making their assigned start time for the stage.
Running with only three brakes for the next four special stages, Raftery and McKillop made a herculean effort to minimize lost time but couldn’t avoid slipping off the overall podium. Despite these challenges, the pair still managed to dominate the LN4, taking 20 of 20 stage wins in their class, including the Power Stage, to claim their first ARA class win by more than seven minutes. Yglesias and Harrell finished second in class, while Tabor and McKee completed the LN4 podium in third.
“We definitely had a tough day, but we’re really happy to get to the finish,” Raftery said. “We were really happy with the pace [Friday]. We had some really good stage times, especially against the Rally2 cars, so there were a lot of positives to take.
“Unfortunately [Saturday], we had the problem and lost a good bit of time. We dropped from third to fifth overall, but it’s still really good to be here. We know there’s still more pace to come, so we just have to prove it at the next rally.
“The team were fantastic, Tony, Element, all the crew. We had only a 20-minute service to get the car back out again for the Power Stage, and we tried to give them as much information as we could ahead of time so they were ready.
“In fairness to all the team, they did an unreal job. The car came straight in, they got everything done, and the car was perfect going out for the last stage. They gave us a great car all weekend.”
With just two NA4WD cars entered in the National rally, Erik and Jordan Buetow’s 2008 Subaru Impreza came out on top of Piatkowski’s 2.5 RS in the class.
The LN4 podium also accounted for two of the recipients of the Subaru For the Love of Rally Award, which provides cash prizes to the top three non-factory Subaru teams among National entries.
Buetow earned the $1,000 first-place prize, while Piatkowski received $250 for third. Second place’s $500 prize went to the L4WD Subaru WRX STi of Nick Pysklyvets and Roman Romanchuk.
Burke Fights Through Attrition for O2WD Victory
Once again proving to be one of the most closely fought and unpredictable classes in the championship, the Open Two-Wheel-Drive (O2WD) fight became a battle of attrition as nine cars competed for class victory.
River City Rally’s (RCR) Michael Hooper and Michael Farrow took an early lead in their 2007 Lexus IS350, Hooper’s long-proven platform. After trading stage wins Friday, Matthew Nykanen and co-driver William Ross overtook the Lexus in their 1998 BMW 323i on the final stage of the day, shrinking the gap at the start of the final day to just 3.1 seconds.
The Lexus and BMW crews traded the lead no less than four times Saturday, never separated by more than four seconds, before a mechanical retirement on SS17 took Nykanen out of the fight. Just two stages later, a broken axle ruined Hooper’s rally as well.
“We were on Bolster Hollow, got through the first corner, shifted into third, and then bang, the axle goes,” Nykanen said. “The axle bolts seem to have backed out and then sheared off in the output flange, and that was it. Rally’s a cruel mistress.”
Olympus Rally O2WD winners and Stellantis Rally Cup North America competitors William Tung and Michael Szewczyk were also in the mix early in their 2025 Peugeot 208 Rally4, but a roll Saturday saw them retire as well.
In the wake of those retirements, multi-time class champions Seamus Burke and Martin Brady took the top spot in their 1977 Ford Escort Mk II. While the front-runners traded blows and ran into trouble, Burke and Brady kept the Escort within reach and avoided the mistakes that claimed the cars ahead.
Danny Shalev and Glen Ray took their Peugeot 208 Rally4 to a second-place finish, also earning points toward the Stellantis Rally Cup North America, while Andy Cowan and John Vinti put their 1990 Volkswagen Jetta VR6 on the podium in third.
Civic Type R HRC Rally XP Takes L2WD Win on Debut
After debuting at SEMA in 2025, the much-anticipated Honda Civic Type R HRC Rally XP finally hit the ARA stages at SOFR, with Honda of America Racing Team (HART) Rally Team members Chris Sladek and John Sharps giving the car its first competitive outing.
Sladek, the 2022 L4WD National Champion, started the rally strongly, running second among the 10 Limited Two-Wheel-Drive (L2WD) entries and keeping the new Civic comfortably in podium contention throughout the opening half of the event.
For much of the rally, the class belonged to Henry Tabor and Dylan Hooker, who, despite suffering a power loss from unknown turbo issues, were leading in their 2015 Ford Fiesta ST. Unfortunately, they lost their lead on Saturday when an axle that broke on SS11 fell out on the transit to SS13, leading to a two-minute loss that dropped them behind Sladek and Sharps.
From there, the HART crew inherited the lead and held it through the remaining stages to give the Civic Type R HRC Rally XP a debut class victory.
Behind the top two, Ryan McGrath and Crystina Coats held third for much of the rally in their 2007 Lexus IS250, but came under pressure from Michael Myers and Lauren Schmitt’s 2014 Ford Fiesta ST. Myers and Schmitt eventually made the move on SS17, overtaking the Lexus and holding on to complete the podium.
Tabor and Hooker fought back to claim the L2WD Power Stage win and three extra championship points, but Sladek and Sharps left Ohio with the class victory, while Tabor and Hooker finished second and Myers and Schmitt took third.
Spanhel Overcomes Massive Penalty for First Win
Running alongside the National Championship battle at Southern Ohio Forest Rally, the SOFR Super Regional Rally offered grassroots and local competitors a chance to tackle nearly the entire SOFR itinerary, omitting only the Power Stage, while collecting points toward the ARA Eastern Regional Championship across 115 stage miles over three days.
While many competitors arrived well prepared to contend for victory, one surprising entrant quickly established himself as the team to beat.
The L4WD entry of Martin Spanhel and Alexandra Skodova immediately jumped to second on Thursday night’s Super Specials before moving into the lead on the first forest stage Friday morning. From there, the pair stayed in control throughout Friday’s competition, winning five of the eight stages and opening a 2:42.6 advantage over second-place Tom Mayer and Dillon McKenna by the end of SS10.
Saturday morning, officials assessed Spanhel and Skodova a two-minute, 30-second penalty for a Quiet Zone violation during the transit to SS3. Once the penalty was retroactively applied to their time, their lead shrank to just 12.6 seconds, setting up a tight battle between Spanhel’s 2013 Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X and Mayer’s RallySport Direct-backed L4WD 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX.
While the two traded times throughout the final nine stages, Spanhel was once again able to pull away, securing a decisive victory by 29.6 seconds over the Bugeye Subaru for his first ARA overall victory after winning the final stage by just 0.6 seconds.
The overall regional podium and L4WD podium were completed by Nick Balzer and Jon Schrage, who drove their 2004 Subaru WRX Wagon forward from 11th place after SS1.
Just over 30 seconds behind Balzer in fourth overall, the NA4WD entry of Ryan Pryzbylkowski and Betsy Nguyen’s 2001 Subaru Impreza “3.0RS” claimed the class victory and a top-five overall finish.
While they faced pressure early from Nathan Coulter and Bryce Proseus in their 1990 Subaru Legacy, a blown head gasket forced the pair to retire after SS6. Undeterred, the crew trailered the Legacy to Louisville, Kentucky, replaced the engine overnight with help from volunteer crew from the nearby University of Northwestern Ohio, and returned for Saturday’s stages.
Their efforts paid off as attrition took its toll on the field. Coulter and Proseus recovered to finish third in class, while Jess Davids and Alyssa Voyzelle-Montminy rounded out the NA4WD podium in second.
Coulter and Proseus were also awarded the Ken Block 43VER Award presented by 43i, which recognizes the team that best embodies Ken Block’s “Ain’t Care” attitude, press-on-regardless mindset, and commitment throughout the rally. For their SOFR performance, 43i will cover safety equipment for the pair up to $1,430.
In the two-wheel-drive categories, it was the L2WD class that prevailed over the more powerful O2WD machinery. The ANY% Subaru BRZ of Chris and Sara Nonack claimed a seventh consecutive class victory and their first SOFR win after last competing at the event in 2022.
The three-time East Regional Champions found themselves second in class after Thursday’s Super Special stages but quickly overtook the 2008 Volkswagen Rabbit of Matt McGee and Lauren Lambert on Friday’s opening forest stage. From there, they went on to win 13 of the rally’s 19 stages in Regional L2WD competition.
Their pace was so impressive that after an off from Mike Cessna and Jamie Lambert on SS5, the Nonacks led all two-wheel-drive competitors in the Regional rally and finished as the highest-placing 2WD crew overall.
The Regional O2WD class, much like its National counterpart, was fraught with attrition and heartbreak in a competition where steady pace and reliability prevailed over powerful builds and aggressive driving.
Mike Cessna and Jamie Lambert led early in their 1998 BMW M3 until their off on SS5. Following their retirement, the battle appeared set to settle with Alex Kuklov and Emmons Hathaway leading in their 1998 BMW E36 over first-time rallyist Mika Block in the Blockhouse Racing Ford Fiesta R2T and Jack Pullen and Chris Zoni’s 2015 Honda Civic in third.
SS6 changed everything as both Block and fellow class contender Kuklov retired, allowing Pullen to move into the lead. As the only remaining car in class still running at full pace, Pullen steadily built a substantial advantage over the rest of the field.
Despite four competitors returning under restart rules Saturday morning, Pullen and Zoni already held a 26-minute lead. The pair cruised through the remainder of the rally to earn their first class victory in just their second ARA start.
Behind them, Kuklov was able to survive Saturday’s stages to secure second place, while the Chevy “ColoRADdo” of Dave Carapetyan and KJ Miller fought through three days of mechanical issues to claim third.
The next round of the ARA Eastern Regional Championship takes competitors to the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, for three days and 125 competition miles through the forests of the Keystone State.
To see images for Southern Ohio Forest Rally - visit the SOUTHERN OHIO FOREST RALLY 2026 gallery on Apexiel.
Complete Southern Ohio Forest Rally results: https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/event-results
~Mason Runkel for the ARA