Yahoo Autos Lia Block Will Rally a Championship-Winning Subaru in ARA
Lia Block is headed back to the American rally scene — at least for one week. The 2023 ARA Open 2WD champion is stepping into a championship-winning Subaru WRX for the Lake Superior Performance Rally later this month. It's her first appearance for the manufacturer that was so often tied to her father, Ken.
Specifically, the younger Block will be stepping into the Vermont SportsCar-built Subaru WRX ARA24 that won this year's championship. She will fill in for Brandon Semenuk, who has already clinched his 2024 title and will skip the final round of the season. It'll be Block's second race in an all-wheel-drive rally car, following a single start in her father's Escort RS Cosworth at the end of last season. Block has won four of her five starts in ARA's Open 2WD category.
The start will also be Block's first in a Subaru, rekindling a relationship between the company and her family that goes back to Ken Block's first starts in Rally America back in 2005. Ken ran with Subaru's team until he joined Ford in 2010, a relationship that lasted 11 years. The elder Block briefly returned to Subaru's team when his Ford deal expired in 2021, and now, his daughter will get her first shot in a factory Subaru WRX prepared by Vermont SportsCar in the championship where Ken first made his name.
Lia Block has been busy; she's spent the 2024 season in F1 Academy, a development series designed to give women opportunities in open-wheel racing. She has steadily improved over the course of her first season in open-wheelers, scoring points in six of her last seven starts and tying her career-best finish of fourth in each of her last two races. She sits eighth in the series championship with four races remaining.
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