🇪🇸 Iván Ares

A Galician who took a decade of regional rallying to reach the Spanish title and then collected two of them on different surfaces.

Born in Cambre in 1985 to a father who also rallied, Ares started in kartcross in 2001 and won the Galician championship in it three times before moving to stage rallies properly. The rally debut, a Fiat Punto HGT at Narón in 2006, ended in retirement. His two Galician titles, in 2011 and 2014, came in a Porsche 997 GT3 — an unusual weapon for the job and one he clearly enjoyed.

The breakthrough was 2017. A Hyundai i20 R5 bought for a full national campaign produced podiums on the first four events and then five consecutive wins, which took both his first Spanish championship and the car's, in its debut season on Spanish stages, alongside co-driver José Pintor. He added the gravel title in 2021 and the Iberian Rally Trophy twice.

Eight straight seasons with Hyundai ended in 2025, when he moved to a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 backed by a local dealership and won on his first outing with it. His own operation, Ares Racing, runs Toyota's one-make GR Yaris Cup cars in Spain — the quiet second career most long-serving national champions end up building.