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Lia Block will leave Williams Racing at the end of the year, following the conclusion of her two seasons in F1 Academy, to pursue a career in rallying.

Block joined the Williams Driver Academy at the end of 2023 ahead of her debut in the female-only F1 support series, where drivers can only spend a maximum of two seasons competing, per the series’ regulations.

Despite entering the 16-car field (15 permanent entries and one wild card per round) with the least open-wheel experience of anyone, it took Block just four races over two events to claim her first F1 Academy points, finishing 10th in the second race in Miami last season. That began a run of four consecutive finishes in the points, and she added three more top-10 finishes in the points later in the season, including a pair of fourth place finishes in Singapore.

In 2025 she claimed her first podium finish with second at Zandvoort, before winning for the first time – again in Singapore where she had performed strongly the year before – at the following event.

“I wanted to try open wheel because it was an unknown territory for me, and I had never really gotten to experience open-wheel racing besides a bit of karting when I was younger,” the 19-year-old said in a video posted to Instagram announcing the news. “To be able to take this experience, kind of like a golden ticket, and work with Williams Racing and be in the F1 paddock as well as racing on F1 weekend and [in] F1 Academy, it's just been so amazing and I wouldn't have traded these two years for anything.”

As daughter of the late Ken Block, it was always expected that she might follow in his footsteps. In fact, she's already shown well on loose surfaces, taking the American Rally Association title in the Open 2WD class in 2023 as well as appearing strongly in Extreme E and various categories in the now-defunct Nitrocross series.

Butspeaking to RACER back in 2023, she admitted, “I don't really know where I want to go,” adding, “I think a world championship of some sort, you know, whether that's F1, WRC, or World Rallycross.”

After two years in open-wheel racing – where she also made starts in the Formula Winter Series, Spanish and Italian Formula 4, as well as demonstrated Williams’ championship-winning FW08 and FW14B Formula 1 cars – it looks as if Block has settled on a return to rallying as the avenue in which she'll take her career.

“I had to make the difficult decision on what I want to continue doing for the rest of my career in motorsports,” she said. “Obviously, rally has always been my first love and something that I enjoy doing at all times. That's ultimately what I've decided to pursue going forward in 2026.”

Dominik Wilde

Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?