Sports Car Club of America

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Sports Car Club of America
Sport
Time Trial
Road racing
Hillclimbing in the United States
JurisdictionUnited States
AbbreviationSCCA
Founded1944; 80 years ago (1944)
HeadquartersTopeka, Kansas
PresidentMichael Cobb[1]
Official website
www.scca.com
United States

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit

sanctioning body supporting Autocross, Rallycross, HPDE, Time Trial, Road Racing, and Hill Climbs in the United States
. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional racers.

History

The SCCA traces its roots to the Automobile Racing Club of America (not to be confused with the current

Watkins Glen Grand Prix. Cameron Argetsinger
, an SCCA member and local enthusiast who would later become Director of Pro Racing and Executive Director of the SCCA, helped organize the event for the SCCA.

In 1951, the

Elkhart Lake.[6] Many early SCCA events were held on disused air force bases, organized with the help of Air Force General Curtis LeMay, a renowned enthusiast of sports car racing. LeMay loaned out facilities of Strategic Air Command bases for the SCCA's use; the SCCA relied heavily on these venues during the early and mid-1950s during the transition from street racing to permanent circuits.[7]

By 1962, the SCCA was tasked with managing the U.S.

International Motor Sports Association.[8]

Sanctioned Events

Autocross (Solo)

Corvette of Justin Peachey

The

autocross program is branded as "Solo".[9]
Up to four cars at a time run on a course laid out with traffic cones on a large paved surface, such as a parking lot or airport runway, without interfering with one another.

Competitions are held at the regional, divisional, and national levels. A national champion in each class is determined at the national championship (usually referred to as "Nationals") held in September. In 2009, Solo Nationals moved to the Lincoln Airpark in Lincoln, Nebraska.[10] Individual national-level events called "Championship Tours" and "Match Tours" are held throughout the racing season. The SCCA also holds national-level events in an alternate format called "ProSolo". In ProSolo, two cars compete at the same time on mirror-image courses with drag racing-style starts, complete with reaction and 60-foot times. Class winners and other qualifiers (based on time differential against the class winner) then compete in a handicapped elimination round called the "Challenge". Points are awarded in both class and Challenge competition, and an annual champion is crowned each September at the ProSolo Finale event in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Rallycross

2023 SCCA RallyCross Nationals, photo by Rupert Berrington

The SCCA sanctions "RallyCross" events, similar to autocross, but on a non-paved course.[11] SCCA ProRally was a national performance rally series similar to the World Rally Championship. At the end of the 2004 season SCCA dropped ProRally and ClubRally. A new organization, Rally America, picked up both series starting in 2005.

Road rallies are run on open, public roads.[12] These are not races in the sense of speed, but of precision and navigation. The object is to drive on time, arriving at checkpoints with the proper amount of elapsed time from the previous checkpoint. Competitors do not know where the checkpoints are.

Track Night in America

SCCA Track Night in America Novice Pace Laps, Photo By Kirk Myhre

Track Night in America is a track experience program sanctioned by the SCCA. The program is designed to be low barrier to entry, and accepting to all skill levels. Events happen all over the country, on week evenings usually between Tuesday and Thursday. SCCA planned week night track events to keep costs down, as well as build a program that doesn't take over the entrants entire weekend.

TNiA goes to well known tracks like Road America, VIR, even Sebring and Lime Rock. There are also smaller club tracks like CMP, AMP and Pitt Race. TNiA puts on about 150 events a year, totaling nearly 10,000 entrants each year, and as of 2024 has been running for 10 years.

Time Trials

2023 SCCA Time Trials Nationals, Photo by Tradd Slayton

In recent years, the SCCA has expanded and re-organized some of the higher-speed events under the Time Trials banner.

Hill Climb events. PDX events are non-competition HPDE
-type events and consist of driver-education and car control classroom learning combined with on-track instruction.

Club Racing

2023 SCCA National Championship Runoffs, B-Spec race

The Club Racing program is a

race workers
in all specialties.

The annual national championship for Club Racing is called the

Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (2014), and Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2017). In 2018, the Runoffs will go back west to Sonoma Raceway. In 2019, the race will be held at Virginia International Raceway a track where the race has never been held. It was announced on 15 June 2018 that the Runoffs would go back to Road America in the year 2020. On 25 May 2019, the weekend of the 2019 Indianapolis 500, SCCA announced they will be returning to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2021.[15] The current SCCA record holder is Jerry Hansen, (former owner of Brainerd International Raceway), with twenty-seven national championships.[16]

Formula Vee car of Rick Shields

SCCA Majors formula group classes

The seven national classes of the formula group are

Formula F (FF), Formula Vee (FV), Formula X (FX), and Formula 600
(F600).

Professional racing

See also: SCCA Pro Racing
Trans Am car of Ty Dillon

The SCCA dropped its amateur only policy in 1962 and began sanctioning professional racing.

SCCA Grand Prix Championship.[18] This series was then held under various names through to the 1976 SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 Championship
.

Current SCCA-sanctioned series include Trans Am, the GT World Challenge America for GT and touring cars, the Global MX-5 Cup, and the F1600 Championship Series, F2000 Championship Series, and Atlantic Championship Series for open-wheel racing. SCCA Pro Racing has also sanctioned professional series for some amateur classes such as Spec Racer Ford Pro and Formula Enterprises Pro. SCCA Pro Racing also sanctioned the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup during its time.

Conferences, divisions and regions

The SCCA is organized into six conferences, nine divisions and 115 regions, each organizing events in that area to make the events more accessible to people throughout the country. The number of divisions has increased since the SCCA's foundation. Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific started as a single Pacific Coast Division until dividing in 1966. Rocky Mountain Division is a relatively recent split. The Great Lakes Division was split from the Central Division at the end of 2006.

SCCA Divisions
Conference Division Territory
Northeast Northeast Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Northern Virginia
Southeast Southeast Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, Puerto Rico and Southern Virginia
Northern Central Northern Illinois, Minnesota, Eastern Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin
Great Lakes Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and Southern West Virginia
Mid-States Midwest Division Arkansas, Southern Illinois, Western Iowa, Kansas, Northern Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Western Tennessee
Rocky Mountain Colorado, Eastern Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming
Southern Southwest Louisiana, Texas, and coastal Mississippi
West Northern Pacific Alaska, Northern California, Idaho, Western Montana, Northern Nevada, Oregon, and Washington
Southern Pacific Arizona, Southern California, Hawaii, and Nevada

Awards

See footnote[19]

Hall of fame

Main article: SCCA Hall of Fame

See also

References

  1. ^ Smith, Steven Cole (30 October 2017). "New SCCA Leader is a Consensus Builder". Autoweek: 47.
  2. ^ "SCCA tax filings by year". ProPublica. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  3. ^ Jaslow, Russell. "The Ardent Alligator and The 1949 Watkins Glen Grand Prix". Auto Racing History. Archived from the original on 11 March 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  4. ^ "The History of VIR and Road Racing". Virginia International Raceway. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  5. ^ Welty, Richard. "Introduction to the SCCA". North American Motorsports Pages. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  6. ^ Krejčí, Martin. "SCCA National Sports Car Championship 1951". Racing Sports Cars. Archived from the original on 15 November 2011. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  7. ^ "SCCA Announces 2007 Hall of Fame Class". Sports Car Club of America. 22 November 2006. Archived from the original on 5 December 2006.
  8. ^ Gousseau, Alexis (23 April 2006). "A tribute to John Bishop". IMSAblog. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  9. ^ "Solo". Sports Car Club of America. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  10. ^ "SCCA Solo National Championships Move to Lincoln". 11 November 2008. Archived from the original on 7 January 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  11. ^ "Rallycross". Sports Car Club of America. Archived from the original on 28 June 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  12. ^ "Road Rally". Sports Car Club of America. Archived from the original on 30 June 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  13. ^ "Club Racing: Time Trials". Sports Car Club of America. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  14. ^ "Club Racing". Sports Car Club of America. Archived from the original on 26 May 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  15. ^ "Back to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for 2021 Runoffs".
  16. ^ "Jerry Hansen Race Car Driver | E3 Sparkplug News". Archived from the original on 29 October 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  17. ^ 70 years of the SCCA - Racer Magazine, 30 January 2014
  18. ^ 1967 SCCA Grand Prix Championship Review, myf5000.com. Retrieved 17 June 2014
  19. ^ SCCA Awards Archived 2 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine webpage. Retrieved 7 August 2010.

External links

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