Sébastien Clark and Pat Lévesque Win a Closely Contested Rallye Beauce-Appalaches
September 13, 2026.— Making its debut in the Eastern Canadian Rally Championship (ECRC), Rallye Beauce-Appalaches was held this weekend for its third edition but was contested for the first time as a round of the North American, Canadian and ECRC championships. Staged in the beautiful St-Victor-de-Beauce region, the event represented an entirely new challenge, with roads ranging from fast to highly technical and unfamiliar to most competitors.
Summer sunshine, blue skies and the spectacular scenery of the Beauce region greeted fans and crews at the start of the opening leg on Friday. Then came the numerous timed stages — 27 in total, including 16 counting toward the ECRC classification. The stages proved to be extremely fast, often interrupted by chicanes set up on well-maintained gravel or asphalt roads. Engine power was a decisive factor for those hoping to win, but avoiding any driving or co-driving mistakes was an equally demanding challenge. Sébastien Clark and Pat Lévesque executed that task perfectly. Driving their Ford Fiesta R5, they dominated the event to claim victory by 23 seconds over Vincent Trudel and his American co-driver, Michelle Miller (Subaru WRX STI), the ECRC winners at the Rallye International Baie-des-Chaleurs earlier this summer.
A 23-second gap at the finish represents less than 1.5 second per stage on average, highlighting the intensity of the battle at the front between Clark/Lévesque and Trudel/Miller. The margin was even smaller between second and third place, occupied by Yohan Tessier and Marie-France Desmarais-Trépanier. The 2025 edition winners finished ahead of Ontario’s Michael Dimkovski and his Quebec co-driver, Simon Levac, also in a Subaru. Having won the Black Bear Rally in August, they were looking to claim another podium at Rallye Beauce-Appalaches. They finished fourth, however, less than a minute behind the winners, with the top four crews separated by just 56.1 seconds at the finish.
Maxime Galpin / Théo Mallet - Rallye Beauce-Appalaches 2026
Photo : © Clément Tavernier / poleposition.ca
Behind these four crews, the dominance of Frenchmen Maxime Galpin and Théo Mallet (Peugeot 208 Rally4) was even more pronounced in the 2WD class. The duo led the rally from start to finish. Galpin/Mallet finished ahead of Kurt Duddy and Myriam Bertrand (Nissan Sentra), who endured a rally filled with twists and turns. Gaspesians Dave St-Pierre and Éric Dubé finished third among the 2WD entries with their Ford Fiesta Rally2, putting on a spectacular display on the short, fast and often dusty timed stages. The top three positions in the 2WD class were also occupied by three different manufacturers. Moreover, for the first time in the history of the Eastern Canadian Rally Championship, two WRC-specification cars won both the 4WD class (Clark/Lévesque) and the 2WD class (Galpin/Mallet) at the same event.
Galpin/Mallet and Duddy/Bertrand also finished fifth and sixth overall in the ECRC standings, ahead of American Andrew Benson, co-driven by Ontarian Brandon Pace (Subaru), St-Pierre/Dubé and the fourth-place 2WD crew of Louis Descheneaux-Beaulac and Caroline Moreau (Ford Fiesta). The overall performance of the two crews from Nova Scotia also deserves mention. Both competing Subaru Imprezas, Cal Vandaalen and Meg Grandmaison finished tenth overall, ahead of Blu Vandaalen and Heidi Fennel.
The 2026 edition of the Rallye Beauce-Appalaches featured 33 crews, 27 of them entered in the Eastern Canadian Rally Championship. Twenty crews made it to the finish.
The Eastern Canadian Rally Championship (ECRC) features eight events this season, divided between Quebec (four), Ontario (three) and Nova Scotia (one). The next round will be the championship’s only annual visit to the Maritimes, with the Trout Lake Rally taking place September 26-27 in Nova Scotia.