SCCA’s 2017 Solo championship set for record year

The Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships has a problem, but it's a good problem. You see, for the second straight year, this massive autocross championship event in Lincoln, Neb., has hit its entry cap weeks prior to the event.

In 2016, the event saw 1,302 competitors take on a pair of challenging autocross courses set up at Lincoln Airpark, breaking an event entry cap that had been set at 1,300. Some 86 of those drivers were entered in the C Street class alone, breaking records for both overall and class participation. Based on how that year's event went, the entry cap was increased to 1,350 for 2017 – but few would have thought the new cap would be hit just 12 months later.

With the SCCA Solo National Championships just a few weeks away (competition runs from Sept. 5-8, 2017), there are 1,360 competitors registered, thrusting the event well clear of the 2016 record and forcing the overflow entries to be waitlisted.

Currently, the largest single class is Street Touring Roadster, which is comprised of lightly modified versions of the wildly popular Mazda MX-5 facing off against the Honda S2000 and other like cars. But even with a strong 79-car field in STR, it seems unlikely the single class record set by C Street in 2016 will be beaten this year, despite a larger overall competitor pool.

Posting better than 1,300 entries in two consecutive years is a strong indicator that SCCA's Solo program is firing on all cylinders, and Howard Duncan, Sr. Director of Solo & RallyCross, is cautiously optimistic.

"We view the event hitting the cap for two years in a row as indicative of two things; a recovering economy and the continuing strength of the Tire Rack National Solo program, the support structure for SCCA's National Solo events," he says.

"We have worked continuously to improve event efficiency at these events – ProSolo, Champ and Match Tour – to where competitors feel there is no wasted time, and that the processes are effective in getting information to participants. Since I feel we still have a long way to go to reach event nirvana, despite our successes to this point, the quality of those events will keep improving, thereby driving more interest in Nationals."

With one eye on the future – and keeping in mind just how many competitors can fit into the traditional four-day event format of the Solo National Championships – Duncan feels there is still room to grow before changes would need to be made.

"We have done some informal brainstorming on alternate formats, but we feel we can still grow by about another 100 participants before those discussion become critical," Duncan says. "As we approach that point over the next two years, we will engage the Solo Events Board and [SCCA] membership in those ideas because part of what we want to preserve is the atmosphere of Nationals as a great place to come and be with other members of the Solo community in both a competitive and social environment."

Similar conversations in the past, Duncan explains, have even included the idea of a lower entry cap. "Some have suggested that perhaps we even need to scale back the size of the event and that bigger is not necessarily better," he says. "That is a valid point and should be considered as these discussions unfold over the next two years."

More information about the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships can be found here, including live timing and scoring and video feeds during the championship competition itself.