Having one woman-owned auto-racing business is noteworthy; having two in one small town is worthy of merit. Park City’s Block House Racing, owned by Lucy Block, and Rearden Racing, owned by Lara Tallman, not only reflect a growing segment of women in motorsports, but also draw car buffs to learn more about racing, service their rides, and pay tribute to the late rally superstar Ken Block.
Embracing Speed
“I’ve always been into cars,” says Lara Tallman, who competed professionally in endurance racing for eight years. As a teen in Southern California, she helped her dad rebuild a 1957 Chevy. Eventually, that interest took a backseat to marriage and kids, but when she was in her late 30s, Tallman, always a confident driver, spotted a magazine ad for an introduction to racing clinic and signed up.
She was the only woman in the class, and on the first day, one of her fellow students advised, “Honey, stay out of our way and go to the back.” Tallman did start at the back, but by the end of the day, she was out front, beating all the guys. Soon, she was hooked. “It takes 100% of your focus like nothing else,” Tallman says.
Her first race, with three other co-drivers, was the IMSA Rolex Sunchaser GT seven-hour endurance race in Utah in 2007. For the event, teams consist of three to four drivers per car. At the pre-race meeting, says Tallman, there might have been only one other woman among the 300 or so drivers. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think I should be here,’” she shares.
Tallman readily encourages others, female or male, to try the sport. “Really anyone can race,” she says. “It’s much more accessible [than many people think].” An aspiring racer can buy a relatively inexpensive car, she points out, and enter a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) race. The SCCA’s autocross series, where drivers navigate cones in parking lot, is “very entry level,” Tallman notes. “All you need is a helmet.”
The National Auto Sports Association offers the high-performance driving event courses necessary for getting a racing license, a requirement for entering other amateur races. “If you love cars, you need to be on a track,” says Tallman. “Street driving doesn’t show the performance of cars at all. It’s so exciting to be on a track and really push a car and understand what it’s capable of.”
Porsche 911 GT3 R at the Intercontinental GT Indianapolis 8 Hour, livery designed by Lara Tallman / Photo by Sideline Sports Photography
Serving Local Racers
After retiring from professional racing in 2015, Tallman races purely for fun these days, in addition to testing cars and coaching. Much of her energy goes into running Rearden Racing with veteran pro racer Vesko Kozarov. The name comes from steel magnate Henry Rearden in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. The company customizes race cars, sells performance auto parts, and provides coaching and other resources for both pro and club drivers, which includes supporting more than two dozen cars for Rearden team drivers.
Initially based in Salt Lake, Rearden moved to Park City in 2021. “There’s a pretty sizeable community of car enthusiasts here, because we have an excellent track nearby,” says Tallman, referring to Utah Motorsports Campus, 33 miles west of Salt Lake City in Grantsville.
In 2024, in the wake of the pandemic-driven growth spurt in both Park City’s population and the number of high-performance luxury vehicles, Rearden started an auto service arm for the public, focused on European cars. “We see lots of Porsches and Land Rovers,” says Tallman. Later this year, the company will move into a brand-new headquarters being built on North Forestdale Drive next to WAREHOUSE Motorclub, a high-end auto club and storage facility.
A Family Rallies Together
Lucy Block also has been around motorsports for most of her life. When her husband, Ken, got into rally racing 20 years ago after selling his share in the company he co-founded, DC Shoes, Lucy started driving, too. The couple began visiting Park City to snowboard and became part-time residents in the early 2000s. Eventually they moved here full time.
Already a legend in action sports, Ken also became an icon in racing, known not only for his superlative record on the track but for his eye-catching customized car builds, extremely popular Gymkhana video series and Hoonigan race team brand. After he passed away in January 2023, at age 55, in a snowmobile accident near the family’s ranch, Lucy and their three children wanted to continue his legacy. A new foundation, 43 Institute (named for Block’s race car number), gives money to help others achieve their dreams—motorsports oriented or not.
Lucy raced her first rally in 2009 and has completed more than 30 others since then. As she wrote in a 2023 social media post, however: “I for sure drove my own rally over and over again in rental mini vans all around the world filled with car seats, diapers and rally snacks before I ever actually entered a rally!”
Her first full season on the American Rally Association (ARA) circuit was in 2022. In June 2023, she competed in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in honor of Ken.
She’s not the only female Block who’s professionally racing cars these days. Daughter Lia, now 18, is a fast-rising star in motorsports. She competed in her first full ARA season in 2022, at age 15, after racing karts and off-road vehicles since she was 11. “She was always a car or two behind me [at the start],” says Lucy, “but I would drop in my starting position so that I would be able to see her throughout the day and see that she finished.” Both Lia and Lucy raced ARA in 2023, and that year Lia won the league’s championship for open two-wheel drive (in a Subaru BRZ), and is the youngest competitor ever to win that class in the U.S.
Mother and daughter then teamed up for the Baja 1000, the notorious 1,311-mile, off-road race on the Baja Peninsula. Sharing the driving with two other racers for a team of four, the Blocks finished first in their vehicle class, piloting a Can-Am Maverick R UTV.
Now Lia is racing F1 cars, too. A member of the co-ed Williams Racing Driver Academy, she started driving in the all-female F1 Academy Series last year. This March, she became the first female driver to join Rockstar Energy’s athlete team.
Meanwhile, the middle Block sibling, Kira, 16, also races, but these days she’s just as into horseback riding, with a dream of making an Olympic equestrian team. And younger brother Mika, 13, races with a goal of competing in rallies.
Driving Forward
Lucy took off the 2024 season from racing and is doing the same this year. She’s had her hands more than full getting the fledgling 43 Institute off the ground and helping put together an exhibition of some of Ken’s wildly creative cars, plus memorabilia, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
“We had four months to pull it together,” says Lucy of the Petersen exhibit, which includes nine of his custom-built power machines that are Fords, Audis, Porsches and Subarus. That included getting input from many of the people who had been part of Hoonigan Racing and knew historical data, explains Lucy, as well as tracking down current owners of the cars and figuring out transport. Among the vehicles on display are the Hoonipigasus (a 2022 Porsche 911 SVRSR, built for the 100th running of Pikes Peak) and the Hoonitruck (based off a 1977 Ford F-150).
At the opening on February 13, speakers, who included Ford CEO Jim Farley, highlighted the impact Ken had on the automobile industry. “It was amazing to look back at Ken’s career as a whole,” says Lucy.
The exhibit runs through October 5, but 43 Institute, known as 43i, is here for the long-term. In 2024, a kickoff event at Woodward Park City launched the initiative on April 3, being 4/3: National Ken Block Day. The celebration expanded in 2025 to four days in three cities: Woodward Park City, Woodward Tahoe and Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The foundation’s website refers to the “motivated misfits” it aims to serve, which Lucy elaborates on. At the beginning of his rally career, “Ken and the people that worked with him didn’t fit the mode. We joked that we were the misfits when we came to the WRC [World Rally Championship].”
Obviously, the “misfits” ended up achieving great success, and Ken’s passion for inspiring others and providing opportunities for them to forge their own nontraditional paths drives 43i’s mission. “Ken made a difference in so many people’s lives,” Lucy says, “not just fans but the people he gave chances to, whether in media or racing or building a vehicle or just doing logistics.”
This spirit was a hard thing to nail down as friends and family created a nonprofit, she adds. They didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, by developing programs, at least to start. Instead, the foundation raises money to provide grants, whether for scholarships to Salt Lake Community College’s automotive program or the graphic arts program at Palomar College near San Diego (Ken’s alma mater) or funding for Utah’s Youth Sports Alliance and a group in New York City that brings urban kids out into nature, among other things.
As Lia’s racing career takes off, Lucy hopes to get back in a car regularly next year. “I wanted to race rally this year,” she says, “but at some point, I had to breathe. Being a mom is my number-one job, and I’m now a business owner, too, which is a learning process.” For now, Lucy plans to help Mika build his driving skills as he preps to start rally racing next year, and she hopes the two of them will be able to race the season together.
The Block family continues to regroup after their tragic loss, and Lucy leans heavily on the motorsports community and the acceptance she’s received. “Ken always said he’s a lucky bastard,” she says. “I’m not exactly that, but I’m fortunate that we are loved and well supported in this industry.”
