It's hard to believe that the 2015 TireRack SCCA Solo Nationals is just around the corner. SoloMatters reached out to Alex Jones, who is our East course designer for this year’s big show. For those of you that may not know Alex by name, he is the guy that may have one of the newest "Prepared" car on the grid, chopping up a perfectly good ‘07 Pontiac Solstice GXP for F Prepared. If that doesn't prove Alex's commitment to the sport, I'm not sure what does.

With 14 years of Autocrossing experience under his belt, Alex began competing with the Firebirds Car Club before becoming an SCCA member of the Northwest Ohio region four years later. It wasn't long after his autocrossing debut that he was tackling the premier job as course designer, where he began designing courses for the local club. Fast forward several years, and the majority of today’s national autocrossers have driven over Alex’s work. Beginning with the Oscoda ProSolo in 2011, Alex sculpted the courses of many other notable events including the 2013 SCCA ProSolo Finale, and last year's Toledo Pro and Wilmington Tour. It was only a matter of time before Mr. Jones was assigned the grand-daddy of all assignments, designing for the Solo Nationals. Alex believes there are three key qualities a top notch course designer should have:

"Flexibility, a visual mind, and thick-skin.

You have to be flexible in your design and attitude. Most of the time, you design a course without actually being at the site. Problems will arise. The airport didn’t move some equipment as far out of the way as planned. Your course flows right over an unanticipated surface issue. The safety steward has a concern. Some of these things you just can't fix and others you can compromise. Even though you are the course designer, It's important to remember that you're working as a team with others, each with their own role. A visual mind helps translate ideas from your mind to paper to concrete. Using the above view course map to visualize what the course will look like on the ground can be difficult and can take practice.Thick-skin is a must. You try to please everybody, but must realize it's not possible. Some people will say nasty things about your course (it's easy to say anything from behind a keyboard!) so you must be able to brush it off, filter through the noise and find the constructive criticism."

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, right? Anyone who has ever tried it will agree that scheming up a quality design is no simple task. When asked how it’s done, Alex gave us the run-down of the process he goes through when putting one of his masterpieces together. Fortunately, the site that Lincoln Airpark provides for us allows the designers to get creative with little standing in their way.

"Start with a scale map of the site with all known obstacles marked off. Then figure out where the start and finish will be.

After that it's about designing the flow of a course. I draw a smooth line carefully around the site with straights and varying radii curves. You want to make sure it has a good balance so you don't accidently design in any course dependencies for class competition. I also think about corner station placement at this point. I may come up with 2 or 3 different flow sketches.

Last is adding the cones and visuals. I will usually make a few copies of the flow sketches and place elements around the flow. Once I think I have a good layout I will remove the flow-line and re-draw the line, anticipating how people will actually drive it."

Without revealing too much about this year's East course, Alex hints to incorporating a "Chicago Box" or two in his design, as he enjoys watching people cringe at the sight of them. Definitely expect some creative elements that'll make you think twice when determining how to approach Jones' course this year.

Originally posted on SoloMatters by Julian Garfield