Ken Block has taken a big leap towards his first ever US rallying title with maximum points on the penultimate round of the 2022 American Rally Association presented by DirtFish National championship, Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally.
Driving his Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC, Block was never headed as he went on to record a 1m20s victory over Subaru Motorsports USA’s Travis Pastrana, who now has next-to-no chance of holding onto his title this season.
STPR was a far costlier event for his team-mate Brandon Semenuk though, whose crash on SS2 has left him 19 points down on Block before dropped scores are considered.
Subaru managed to repair Semenuk’s car for him to return to the stages on Saturday, with the full five points on the powerstage a key aim.
But Semenuk failed in his mission, beaten by Block by 6.4s (despite Block suggesting he might not go all-out for powerstage points) on the powerstage and setting exactly the same time as Pastrana to the tenth of a second.
“We come away from this event with a really good score, so now with all the drops we’re actually up two points over Brandon going into LSPR,” Block told DirtFish.
“It’s been a BATTLE since 100 Acre Wood with all the bad luck and the craziness going on but we’ve got four wins now and we’re finally up on the championship going into the last event, so it’s pretty wild.
“But this event is actually more work than I’ve ever put into any event ever before,” Block revealed.
“We knew the battle was going to be won or lost right here before the last round and Alex and I put in a ton of work to make it so that we had a chance to have this win.”
Semenuk and Pastrana therefore book banked four bonus points, but this year’s ARA title is now looking very much like Block’s to lose.
Tom Williams scored a strong third overall on his first ARA start since May, recording his second podium of the year following a third place in Olympus.
‘Texas Dave’ Carapetyan had looked nailed on for fourth overall in his Subaru, but he retired towards the end of SS13 of 16.
That allowed Allen Dobasu to sneak into fourth overall in his older generation Ford Fiesta R5+ – claiming two powerstage points on what was just his second start in the ARA.
There were celebrations in fifth overall too as that result, first in class, was enough for Seamus Burke to retain his Open 2WD class title.
Micah Nickelson had been on to beat Burke in Pennsylvania and thus take the title fight to LSPR in his Volkswagen Golf. But he failed beyond SS11, ending his hopes on the rally and in the championship too.
Dave Wallingford (Fiesta R5) scooped sixth ahead of Michael Hooper (Lexus IS350), while Lucy Block led home her daughter Lia in eighth and ninth places overall – making it three Blocks in the top 10.
Tenth spot went to Nick Allen in his Ford Fiesta ST.
Adam Kimmett was victorious in the Regional Rally, beating fellow Subaru Impreza driver Jon Kramer by over three minutes.
Sumit Panjabi made sure Mitsubishi was represented on the podium with third in his Evo X.
