After leading all weekend to take the win at 100 Acre Wood for the third year in a row, Ken Block continued his dominance on fast, flowing roads last weekend by winning the year's Olympus Rally.
The Olympus Rally is one of the oldest rally events in America, and at one time was a World Rally Championship event. This year the organizers had to move the rally across the state, though, after the traditional roads were made unavailable to them.
These new roads were mostly very fast, well flowing roads, which Ken Block and co-driver Alex Gelsomino have a history of success on.
In this rally, Ken and Alex basically led from start to finish, leaving the very strong field literally in the dust.
This event saw the return of former Rally America champion Pat Richard, who ended up finishing in sixth, just over three minutes behind Block.
Matthew Johnson took his new open class car out to Washington and finished strong in fifth place. After winning the Production GT championship last year, Johnson is proving that he has what it takes to be a contender.
Andrew Comrie-Picard took fourth, fighting back from mechanical problems on stage one to finish two minutes and 20 seconds back from Block.
Tanner Foust put the Rockstar Rally team on the podium for the first time this year by finishing third, one minute, 12 seconds behind. Foust had a couple of stage wins, but overall he just couldn't keep up with Block.
Second was won by defending Rally America champion Travis Pastrana. Derek Ringer was co-driving for Pastrana again, filling in since February when Christian Edstrom decided to take some time off.
Just out of sixth place were Kyle Sarasin and Andrew Pinker, who were both competitive, but just didn't have enough to run up front.
After this event, Ken Block has expanded his points lead to 13 points, over Andrew Comrie-Picard. Though Block is pulling away early in the season, the season is still young enough that many different drivers still have a legitimate chance.
The next rally has a great chance of shaking up the points because it takes place on the very tight, twisty foresting roads of Oregon. Andrew Pinker won this event last year, and it could prove to be the stepping stone he needs to get back into the championship hunt. The event takes place May 16-18 outside of Portland, Oregon.
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