The 2025 American Rally Association (ARA) National Championship Presented by Kubota kicked off in spectacular fashion this weekend as Subaru Motorsports USA (SMUSA) athletes Brandon Semenuk and Keaton Williams battled snow, ice and the hard-charging, Kubota Tractor-sponsored team of Conner Martell and Alex Gelsomino to take their third consecutive victory at the historic Sno*Drift Rally.
With a decades-long history, and some of the most devoted fans on the planet, the Sno*Drift Rally in Atlanta, Michigan, is known as one of the most difficult rallies in the world, as it’s the only snow and ice rally to outlaw the use of studded tires (in compliance with Michigan state law), making grip a rare commodity on the slick gravel-based stages.
Over three dozen brave teams made the trek into the cold Northern Michigan climate to take on an itinerary spanning 17 stages and 118 stage miles across two days.
Conditions were both ideal and challenging, as, for the first time in several years, a soft layer of snow fell earlier in the week, covering the icy gravel roads with mulitple inches of fresh powder. Sub-freezing temperatures during the event and additional precipitation throughout the weekend ensured the road surface didn’t turn into mud or slush, allowing the winter tires to take hold as competitors power drifted and plowed through the stages, frequently impacting deep snow banks flanking the course.
The action all started on Friday night with the traditional Lewiston, Michigan Parc Exposé lining the streets of the small town, as all 39 cars were on display to the public before setting off from the ceremonial start at 6:00 PM
As the sun set, spectators lined the stages with bonfires, air horns, and even video projectors as they awaited this year’s competition.
The first car they saw on stage was the No. 21 Kubota Tractor Corporation Subaru WRX of Vermont SportsCar athletes Conner Martell and Alex Gelsomino.
The pair first started entering rallies together last year and have quickly shown their prowess with national stage wins and podiums already under their belt.
One of America’s most experienced co-drivers, Gelsomino has helped Martell get quickly up to speed on stage, as the 27-year-old rallycross driver seized second overall in his first-ever Sno*Drift – and only the tenth stage rally event of his career.
While Martell and Semenuk were fighting for the top spot, the battle for the podium raged behind them.
Pat Gruszka and Aris Mantopoulos in the Green APU Hyundai i20 R5 car was set to start third, but ECU issues forced them to retire before stage one.
The L4WD Eagle Rock Racing Fiesta Rally3 entry of Nick Allen and Martin Brady quickly took third, with class competitors Ele Bardha and KJ Miller sitting less than ten seconds off their pace and pushing hard.
Unfortunately, on the third stage, the motor in Bardha’s Prodrive Subaru Impreza STI let go, forcing their retirement. The L4WD Garage 126 Renault Clio Rally3 of Sean Donnelly and Zach Pfeil then moved into fourth, only to be overtaken on the fourth stage by the O4WD Ford Focus RS of Cameron Steely and Bryce Proseus.
From there, competitors headed back to service and prepped for a second run through the first four stages as conditions and racing surface continued to evolve with each change in temperature and pass by competitors, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. While the front of the field didn’t see much in the way of position changes, O2WD class leaders Matthew Nykanen and Lars Anderson moved their E36 BMW 328i from 11th to 8th overall in the span of just two stages.
At Parc Exposé the following morning, Nykanen explained their plan to take things easy and try to earn points backfired slightly as dropping his pace to survive on stage caused him to make more mistakes than driving at full pace would have.
“I feel like I'd dropped my pace by 20% on those first couple of stages, and my concentration felt like it dropped by 50%. It felt sloppy, and we had a spin on stage three on that downhill section,” he said.
“I was like, ‘all right, enough of this. I'm just gonna drive how I always drive,’ and put the hammer down and just locked in and that's what we did, and the rest of the stages went a lot better.”
But while Nykanen led the 2WD cars, it was Semenuk and Williams in the overall lead after Day One of Sno*Drift 2025. With two consecutive Sno*Drift wins, the SMUSA Team’s refined pace notes combined with Semenuk’s keen ability to find grip on stage led them to a commanding lead as they entered day two of the rally.
“It was a pretty good day,” Semenuk said. “I quite enjoyed the stages. A couple of them really developed well on the second pass, which is unusual for Sno*Drift. It usually just gets really icy, but yeah, it was good. It was just a no-risk, nice clean drive.”
Sitting in second and growing ever more confident at his first Sno*Drift, Martell continued to push as he found comfort on the Atlanta roads.
“Friday was a really enjoyable day compared to last year,” Kubota Team co-driver Gelsomino explained. “We got some proper conditions, you know, we got snow, we got snow banks; just the grip was very inconsistent, but that's the same every year, the second passes of the stages especially. And this is the first time for Conner here, so all things considered, he did a phenomenal job.”
Third place overall, and first in L4WD, going into Day Two would be the Eagle Rock Racing Fiesta. Despite a strong L4WD field, Allen and Brady built a comfortable gap on Day One that they hoped to manage on Day Two.
“Friday it went kind of according to plan,” Allen explained, “I say kind of because the conditions here are tricky, and you can't really have anything go exactly the way you want it to.”
“We wanted to come out a little bit aggressive on night one and build a gap, and we were able to do that. That didn't happen without a couple of moments, though, on a few of the stages, and we also had some issues with icing up on the windshield. So today we're hoping for a little bit cleaner run, trying to maintain that lead, and having fun in the snow.”
Photos by Justin Smith Photography
Finally, in the L2WD class, the Bearly Cyrious Ford Fiesta ST of Chris Cyr and Glen Ray held the lead despite their own admissions of difficulty on the second loop.
“The whole first section on Friday was awesome,” Cyr said. “The car was doing well, Glen and I were clicking, everything was perfect, and man, we came into service, and it really fell apart after that. It just kind of snowballed, for lack of a better term. I just got uncomfortable. I started sliding; my driving fell apart. It's probably a mixture of the late night and you know, there's nothing else to blame other than driver error, but I’m super lucky with these Michelin X-Ice tires that we cut them open and they just were doing everything I ever could ask them to do.”
After Parc Exposé in Briley Park, Atlanta, Michigan, the teams embarked on Day Two of the Sno*Drift Rally at 12:30 PM on Saturday. With nine stages and 68 competition miles remaining, the game of strategy, skill, and attrition was still very much alive.
Semenuk and Williams went into the second day only needing to maintain their lead. Martell and Gelsomino were constantly getting better and better on the slick stages, however, and as snow fell on the Power Stage, Martell completed the first two splits faster than Semenuk in pursuit of extra points, but ended up 2.8 seconds behind by the end of the stage, as Semenuk sealed his victory and five additional championship points.
“We did the hard work on Day One,” said Semenuk after the rally. “We got a bit of a buffer on Day Two and just got to try to enjoy the rally, but it was super tricky, with the snow falling at night. In some of these fast sections, if you have the spotlights on, you can't see anything. So, I was actually flipping from having the pods on and pods off, just so in the slower sections you could have all the lights on and you could see because it's not as ‘Star Wars-y.’ When you get going fast, it was almost better just to turn the lights off and trust the notes.”
Standing next to Semenuk on the podium finishing second in his ever Sno*Drift, Martell and co-driver Gelsomino put their Kubota Tractor Corporation Subaru WRX STI on the podium despite it being Martell’s first time competing in Sno*Drift’s unique format and variable conditions.
“I learned a lot,” said Martell. “It was a lot tougher than I anticipated. On the first pass, there's decent grip, and then on the second pass, it's just so inconsistent. We had a few mistakes, more than I would have liked, but we're still learning.”
“We lost the Power Stage by only two seconds, so I had a pretty good push at the end, and I felt good with the drive. So hopefully we can carry that into round two at 100 Acre Wood, and try to give Brandon a little bit more pressure.”
“A huge thank you to Vermont SportsCar for giving me a great vehicle and to Kubota, running the orange tractor out there is amazing, so thank you, everybody.”
Rounding out the overall podium were Nick Allen and Martin Brady in their L4WD Ford Fiesta Rally3.
“'I’d say that the rally went according to plan,” Allen said, “s much of a plan as you can have for Sno*Drift. I mean, the conditions were wild, and the car was jumping all over the place.
“Our plan was to come out Friday night and kind of attack and see if we could build a bit of a lead and then try to hold that. We were able to do that Friday night and so all day Saturday we just tried to maintain that. I think we did end up building on on our lead, but our goal was really just to maintain.”
“And then on the last couple stages visibility was really poor. It was really sketchy and super slippy, and we backed off a bit. It worked out, though, on the power stage, and we got max points for the season.”
Allen and Brady also won the L4WD class where they were joined on the podium by the teams of Sean Donnelly and Zach Pfeil, and Madelyn Tabor and Sophia McKee. On top of that, Allen and Brady were awarded the KB43VER Flat Out award for their efforts in getting back on stage after a car-destroying off last year.
In the O2WD class, Nykanen and Anderson ran away with the win in their BMW 328i, ending up sixth overall.
“Today was good.” Nykanen said. “Going into them, I thought the stages would be a lot more icy. We found pretty good traction on the first loop of stages, but by the second run, anything tighter than a four was just glare ice, so we had to tone her back a little bit.”
“It was tough finding where the limits of the road were, but luckily, there were big fluffy snow banks when that didn't work out. We used a lot of snowbanks to our advantage, and we spun once on stage 10, I've never been that sideways for that many miles before, so it was a good time.”
Finishing second in O2WD, the only other finishing team was the Golf GTI of John Gusmano Zachary Goldstein.
Finally, in the L2WD class, the Bearly Cyrious Fiesta kept its lead, and Chris Cyr and Glen Ray found themselves atop the podium.
“We had to build confidence in the first part of Saturday,” Cyr said, “We changed the brake settings, and we started to finally really get some grip, as much as you could in the conditions, so it ended up working out.”
“Towards the end of the day when the snow really started falling, things started clicking. One secret for the Power Stage, because there was so much snow, we taped all of our rally lights except for the very last one on the very outside edge. And I think that was my competitive advantage for winning by so much on that last stage. I had just enough light that I could see far enough down the road, but I didn't actually have all the glare off the snow.”
Second place behind Cyr was the winner of the Highest-placing Subaru in the rally incentive, the BRZ of Santiago Iglesias and Robbert Kassel, while third place was taken by Mark Tabor and Katheryn Hansen’s Ford Fiesta.
As the lone RC2 Entrants, Pat Gruzska and Aris Mantopoulos managed a class win after rejoining under Restart After Retirement regulations on Saturday despite their early retirement on Friday. This gave the team heavy penalties going into Day Two, but still classifies them as finishers.
National Top 10
Brandon Semenk/Keaton Williams -1:57:58.7
Conner Martell/Alessandro Gelsomino - 2:02:10.3
Nick Allen/Martin Brady - 2:17:15.3
Cameron Steely/Bryce Proseus - 2:21:02.8
Sean Donnelly/Zach Pfeil - 2:26:40.1
Matthew Nykanen/Lars Anderson - 2:35:48.0
Chris Cyr/Glen Ray - 2:37:52.3
Santiago Iglesias/Robert Kassel - 2:41:57.8
Mark Tabor/Kathryn Hansen - 2:44:44.9
Madelyn Tabor/Sophia McKee - 2:49:10.3
For complete results, visit this LINK
~Mason Runkle, for the ARA