Latvala heads stacked entry as Olympus Rally celebrates its WRC 40th anniversary

WRC legend Jari-Matti Latvala (above) heads up a stacked entry when this weekend’s Kubota Olympus Rally celebrates 40 years since the FIA World Rally Championship brought its spectacular, but controversial Group B era to a close on Washington’s Olympic Pensinsula in 1986.

The Olympus Rally, round three of the American Rally Association (ARA) National Championship and one of the series’ signature events, will commemorate that 1986 WRC milestone with the longest rally in ARA history – 198 competitive miles across 18 special stages and three days of competition, April 17-19.  

Markku Alen won the 1986 Olympus Rally in Lancia’s legendary Delta S4. The WRC’s Washington debut was the last event of the spectacular Group B era.

Latvala, an 18-time WRC rally winner and now team principal of the WRC-dominating Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team, will drive a second Toyota GR Corolla Rally RC2 alongside full-season driver and Toyota FIA World Rally-Raid ace Seth Quintero.

“Last year we were testing the GR Corolla Rally RC2 here on Olympus Rally roads,” said Latvala, who retired from full-time WRC competition at the end of 2019, but continues to show his speed in one-off WRC2 drives on his home event, Rally Finland, and as the reigning FIA European Historic Rally Champion, “but I’ve never driven a rally in [the USA], so I’m very eager to see the culture and the feeling of the event. Olympus is more than 300 stage kilometers, which is as long as a WRC event, and that makes it especially fascinating for me.”

Joining the Toyota duo and their co-drivers, Finns Tuukka Shemeikka and Topi Luhtinen, in a sold-out 98-car field that includes a record-setting 12 of the overall victory-chasing RC2 cars are four-time and reigning ARA champ Brandon Semenuk, 2025 Canadian champion and former Mexican champion Ricardo Cordero, and current ARA overall points leader Travis Pastrana.

Canadian Semenuk had taken an ARA sabbatical in 2026 in order to pursue Rally2-level opportunities in Europe, but will make a one-off start in a Proworx-run Ford Fiesta Rally2 to go head to head with Latvala.

“I haven’t raced in eight months and coming into this event on the back of so little preparation…I’m going to drive this one for myself,” said Semenuk, who won last year’s Olympus Rally on the way to a fourth-straight ARA title with Subaru. “It’s great to be around an event where Jari-Matti is competing, but this is a new car I’m not familiar with on [Pirelli] tires I haven’t run before, working with a new engineer – it’s kind of a stressful situation…”

Brandon Semenuk won last year’s Olympus Rally with Subaru (above) and the four-time and reigning ARA champ makes a one-off return in 2026.

Adding further quality to the RC2 ranks in what’s arguably the biggest event in American rallying since the last WRC-counting Olympus Rally in 1988 are Lia Block in a Hyundai i20 N Rally2, Tom Williams in a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2. Block came close to winning February’s season-opening Sno*Drift Rally, while Williams looked a near-cert for victory on last month’s Rally in the 100 Acre Wood before a late puncture handed the overall win to Pastrana in his Limited 4WD class Subaru WRX ARA25L.

The lighter, more nimble RC2 class cars are expected to hold a slight advantage over Pastrana’s longer-wheelbase Subaru on the tight, winding forest roads of the Olympic Pensinsula, but three-time Olympus winner Pastrana won’t be holding back as he seeks to add a fourth.

Travis Pastrana heads to the Olympus Rally as ARA points leader after winning last month’s Rally in the 100 Acre Wood (above).

Other potential podium-finishers in the RC2 ranks are the Green APU-backed Rally2 Hyundais of Pat Gruzka and Alastair Scully, Cordero in a Citroen C3 Rally2 and Javier Olivares at the wheel of another Fiesta Rally2.

And for a potential upset performance, watch out for rising star Aoife Raftery in a Ford Fiesta Rally3. Fresh off a seventh-place finish – and best non-Rally2 car – on the most recent British Rally Championship round, the Irish driver is one to watch as she takes on her first full ARA campaign.

The Olympus offers some of the most demanding roads in American rallying, with the nature of the forest-based tests often compared to classic Welsh WRC stages. This year’s 18 stages go from high-elevation mountain passes to flat-out forest straights, with unpredictable rain and dense fog adding to the challenge.

The rally starts Friday, April 17, with a 2:00pm PT Parc Expose at Toyota of Olympia, where fans can see the cars and meet the driversrs. Following a 3:30pm ceremonial start, crews will head straight into action, tackling the Taylor Towne Special Stage before the rally’s first major test, the daunting 18.48-mile Wildcat stage. A service splits two identical loops, with the second run taking place in darkness.

Saturday features a Parc Expose in downtown Shelton from 9:30am to 11:00am, followed by the Dayton, Stillwater and 25.86-mile Nahwatzel Meadows stages, once again running late into the night.

The rally concludes on Sunday with 57 miles of stages across the Kuhnle, Schafer, and Deckerville 43 tests, before Mason Lake, a staple of the rally’s WRC era, serves as the bonus points-paying Power Stage.