F1 Academy's Lia Block learned to drift from her dad. Now she's making her own name

New York Times

08-03-2025

Motorsports history is littered with sons of famous fathers following in dad's footsteps and trying to make their own names.
Michael and Mick Schumacher. Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Bobby and Graham Rahal. The Andretti and Sainz families. Bill and Chase Elliott. The list goes on.
But motorsports isn't just a man's world anymore.
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One of the women rising through the racing ranks is F1 Academy driver Lia Block. She's the 18-year-old daughter of Ken Block, who made his name with his rally racing, the popular 'Gymkhana' video series and brands such as Hoonigans before dying in a snowmobiling accident in January 2023.
Lia grew up in paddocks and naturally drifted towards off-road racing, eventually becoming a rally champion and later winning the Pro-Stock division of the Baja 1000 with her mother Lucy and the Block House Racing Team just over a year ago. Having become successful in her own right, the Williams Academy driver is now staring down her second full season in single-seaters, wanting to fight for the F1 Academy title.
Block is grateful that her father and his reputation opened doors to the motorsports world early in her career, but 'it's been really hard' navigating her career as 'the daughter of.'
'I don't want people (to) think that I'm cheating my way through it because I have a leg up. I do have a leg up into the sport because he was so renowned, and he gave me the opportunities to pursue my career,' Block told The Athletic ahead of the 2024 F1 Academy season. 'But I do try and step away from it just a bit because I do want to create my own personality and I want to be my own self.
'I don't want to be known as his daughter. I have a name, which is hard sometimes because I love being his daughter and I would take that over anything any day.'
Although Block's early childhood was when her father competed in different rally and rallycross championships, her earliest motorsport memory happened at a racetrack in Florida.
Ken bought her an electric go-kart to use in their driveway. 'It would only go 20 miles an hour,' Block says.
So, when she tried her first proper go-kart at around six, she was in for a surprise.
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'I didn't know that the faster you go, the less you have to turn. I got in this new go-kart, and it was a lot faster. I went into the first turn and went straight into the infield,' Block says, adding, 'My dad held that over my head forever. It was just a funny experience. It wasn't the time I really fell in love with motorsports. I was still trying everything else, but it was just what made me realize, 'Oh, I gotta work hard for this one.''
Growing up, she did gymnastics before switching to competitive dance. Those were constants in her life, even while trying other sports, including basketball, soccer, flag football, tennis and swimming. Block admits, 'That's kind of weird to say — 'Hey, I was a dancer turned racecar driver,' but I think that's something I really loved growing up.'
Both of Block's parents raced competitively. Ken secured podium finishes in various rally competitions, including the X Games, the World Rally Championship and World RallyCross. Lucy made her rally debut in 2009 and competed in her first full American Rally Association season in 2022.
But they never forced her into motorsports, despite their passion for it. She says, 'My dad had always given me open doors and given me the option to go and do motorsports.'
At around 10, she returned to racing. 'It was kind of … on my own merit. And I think once I realized that I loved it so much and I tried all these things, I felt comfortable with myself and just knew that, 'Yeah, I've tried all of this and this is really where I want to go.''
A self-described 'adrenaline junkie,' Block made her start in the Lucas Oil Off Road Series, which was a short-course series that competed in the United States and Mexico, and eventually went into karting.
At 13, drifting came more into the picture.
'My dad wanted to teach me how to drive stick. So I'd never learned how to drive stick. I was only 12 or 13 maybe, but he took me in his Ford Escort, and I learned how to drive stick in that,' Block recalls. 'He was like, 'Hey, do you want to learn how to drift? You want to learn how to do donuts?' And I was like, 'Of course.''
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They filmed a YouTube video of it, which is nothing new for the family considering Ken created the popular 'Gymkhana' videos that sometimes featured different racing stunts like those he and his daughter were doing.
'I looked back at it the other day, and I was like, 'Wow, I was so awkward.' I did not know how to talk to a camera,' Block says. 'He was doing the Gymkhana videos on YouTube for a long time, so he's always been kind of like a crazy person for drifting and making cars do really cool things. So being able to learn how to do donuts and do it like my dad was really cool.'
She learned how to drift in other cars but what kickstarted her career and brought her into the media was hopping into Ken's famous 1,400HP Mustang 'Hoonicorn' to drag race at 14.
'I don't know whose idea that was,' Block says, 'but it was probably a bad one.'
Block followed in her parents' footsteps in 2021 when she made her national-level rally debut at age 15, competing in the final round of the American Rally Association Championship for the Hoonigan Racing Division.
Bitten by the bug, she progressively added more rallying appearances before winning the American Rally Association Open Two-Wheel-Drive (ARA O2WD) championship in 2023, becoming the youngest ARA champ in history at 16. She was the first woman to compete in Group E for Nitrocross and the first woman to drive Pikes Peak, which she did in her father's car (the Hoonipigasus).
'It just makes me feel like I've accomplished something,' Block says. 'I think it definitely gives me a name. People can't just say, 'Oh why is she here?' I've done something, and I think to carry that, no matter where I go in the future, is really special.'
But Block took a risk after winning that championship.
Williams announced in November 2023 that she would compete in F1 Academy with ART Grand Prix and join the F1 team's academy. And that happened to be the same month she would go on to win the Baja 1000 with her mother. The two disciplines are completely different. 'Kind of have to switch off one part of my brain that's for rallying, switch on the other part that's for open-wheel,' Block said.
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F1 Academy marked Block's single-seater debut. The first car she tested was from Formula Four, which is similar to those in F1 Academy, but she faced a steep learning curve. She went from winning a rally championship to being at the bottom of a different series and learning 'everything from scratch.'
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She had three months to prepare for the opening race in Saudi Arabia, and Block remembers thinking at one point, 'Am I gonna be able to do this?'
It was a new car, all new tracks and people she'd never competed against in her career. Her goal is to be P1, but with 2024 being a learning year, Block knew winning the championship wouldn't be possible. She qualified P7 for her first race at Jeddah Corniche Circuit, something she said, 'I'll take any day.'
She did damage her car's rear wing while trying to pass for fifth during Race 1 that weekend, though it is a memory that she likely looks back on fondly given the aftermath. Back at the Block House headquarters in Utah, wrecked or damaged parts are displayed on the 'Ain't Care Wall.' A description above reads: 'To strive to win at any cost, with zero mechanical sympathy or regard for one's well-being.'
Her mechanics took part of that damaged rear wing and signed it. Block says, 'My mechanic said that I can either not come back the next time or come back with the car in half. He said no more of the little crashes.' She brought that piece home from Saudi Arabia to be added to the wall.
Given Block's motorsports career to date, her switch to single-seater racing raises a few eyebrows. But as Lucy explains it, this change makes sense for where her daughter is right now.
'She's had a lot of calls for different types of driving. But at this point in her career, she really wants to focus on F1,' Lucy told The Athletic's Jeff Gluck last spring.
'It's something you have to get in at a younger age. She could rally when she's 30. You can't do F1 when you're 30. She knows that, and she doesn't want to look back in 10 years and say, 'Oh man, I wish I would have done that.''
Fast-forward nearly a year, Block is on a Zoom call with The Athletic, sporting a Rockstar Energy cap while at home in Utah. She's still her bubbly self, balancing questions about the significance of this new partnership and how she's prepared to fight for the 2025 F1 Academy title. But the biggest difference is a sense of quiet confidence.
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Qualifying in Singapore last fall was 'the big wake-up moment,' Block says. She secured her best qualifying spot of the season after a last-moment effort promoted her to fourth. She says, 'It was when hard work started to pay off, and it's hard when you work so hard behind the scenes and are doing so much and trying to learn so much, but you don't really see it too much on track, and other people don't see it.
'But that Singapore qualifying, it really felt like I was doing something right. I felt like I could be there, and I deserved that spot.'
Block scored a combined 24 points that weekend after consecutive fourth-place finishes, her biggest points haul of the seven-round season. She ended the year eighth with 44 points and now faces her second — and final — season in F1 Academy.
That debut season presented a massive learning curve for Block, as she went from winning the ARA O2WD championship to jumping into a single-seater for the first time. She did have higher expectations for herself heading into 2024 because, naturally, she wanted to win. But Block revisited those expectations around the Miami GP weekend in May, and both she and Williams talked about how 'it's just a learning year.'
One of the biggest lessons Block learned was patience.
'You have to take these little, small, marginal gains as really big accomplishments, because if you keep building those up, you keep going up the ladder,' Block explains. 'Mentally, just stepping back, you can only control what you can control. Everything happens for a reason, and kind of just go with the flow.'
The 2025 season presents a new challenge, with over half of the grid changing from last year and four of the seven drivers who ranked above her last season no longer competing in the championship. The target is to become more comfortable with her car as well as improve working with her engineer and extract the maximum performance from the car each race weekend.
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Block is keen to learn more about the mechanical side of the sport and dive deeper into the Formula One world.
'F1 Academy is the big focus this year. I want big wins, and I want to go for that championship, so it's definitely the main focus,' Block says. 'But I'm looking into doing some rally on the side in between, where we can fit it.'
This is where Rockstar Energy, her new sponsor, comes in. It's no secret that motorsports is expensive, and Block says while her father's career opened the door for her, 'I'm an adult now, and I have to kind of pay for everything now.'
'I don't think people know how expensive it is. Only really when you get to F1 is when you get paid,' Block explains, later adding, 'Rockstar, they support me in everything I want to do. They're here for me. Let's go rally this year. Let's go do some big projects as well as F1 Academy. It's super-cool to have them and to be able to fuel my dreams.'
Block's next step in her motorsports career will be decided based on how this season unfolds. F1 Academy only allows drivers to compete for two seasons, and she will need to show continuous growth. But rallying is still a big part of her life, a door she hasn't closed entirely.
'I still really love rally and off-road and rallycross and stuff like that,' Block says. 'But I also fell in love with the formula series and F1. I guess we'll just have to see.'