Lia Block and Derek Dauncey join David Evans on SPIN, The Rally Pod to discuss Sno*Drift and the future
Photography by ARA / Dan Ring
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
With three corners of last week’s Sno*Drift Rally remaining, this story had a very different look to it. Lia Block was on course to re-write American rally history. One corner later, she wasn’t.
Instead, she was trying to fire up the Ford Fiesta Rally3 which had carried her and Alex Gelsomino to within 100 meters of an extraordinary victory on the Michigan-based ARA National Championship opener. It didn’t happen.
In this week’s episode of SPIN, The Rally Pod, the 19-year-old American talks us through a wild first weekend back as a full-time rally driver. From the moment she overtook Travis Pastrana’s stricken Subaru to lead an ARA round for the first time to the moment everything went south.
Forty-eight hours on, Block’s seeing the positives. She wanted to make a statement and she certainly did that.
“The first thing is that I can still drive a rally car fast,” said Block, who became the youngest ever ARA title winner when she lifted the O2WD class aged 16. Since then, she’s spent two years in the Formula 1 paddock, racing F1 Academy with Williams.
“It was a really great weekend up until the end. You know, I beat Travis on the stage. It’s like everything I could have asked for and just keeping that momentum going into the next round is, is really important. You know, this is a year to get back in the groove of rally and keep building on where we left off. The goal is to impress and to be racing overseas the next year.”
Derek Dauncey, the man behind the careers of Lia and her father Ken, shared the studio with Lia and host David Evans.
“I’ve said this for the last three years or four years,” said Dauncey. “There’s something a bit special about her driving and her ability to basically cope in a situation. [She has a] very good feel for balance, very good feel for placement of the car. I didn’t expect to come away [from Sno*Drift] without points.
“She completely surpassed the pace I was expecting first time there. There’s so much to understand with the grip level, how to read the road where to place the car, where to slow the car down – [Sno*Drift] actually ticked a massive box. I was smiling.”
Tags: ARA, ARA 2026, Lia Block, Sno*Drift Rally, SPIN The Rally Pod
Publish Date February 10, 2026 DirtFish
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