“The President's Cup? I knew about [winning it] only a few days before the 2026 SCCA® National Convention. I never contemplated winning the award, never thought it was anything that would ever happen to us …”
It was maybe not on freshly crowned Formula Vee® National Champion Alex Scaler’s mind, but very few other people were surprised. The 13-lap FV race at the 2025 SCCA National Championship Runoffs® Presented by Sunoco at Road America was spectacular, Scaler and three-time champion Andrew Whitston slipping away from an early 12-car pack, working together cleanly, and setting up a side-by-side, final-corner-and-long-uphill drag race. At the line, Scaler’s No. 79 ASC/Autowerks/Hoosier Scaler Mk1 was just inches and 0.042sec ahead.
Friend and perennial Runoffs rival Whitston was disappointed but had only kind words for the 27-year-old champion: “Alex was racing hard, and we got away because he was pushing,” Andrew said following the race. “ did an awesome job of pushing me around and racing really clean where we could make that break and get away.”
Friends Like These
SCCA’s President’s Cup, established in 1957, is the Club’s oldest and most prestigious award. The long list of previous Cup winners is a Who’s Who of American road racing, and Scaler is a very worthy addition.
“We spent so much time, effort, and energy focused on trying to win the Runoffs, and we failed at it 10 times,” Scaler reflected. “But it finally worked out, on the 11th try.”
Yet, after all those years of toil, the win, Alex said, was something he wished he could have enjoyed differently.
“For me personally, winning the Runoffs was much less exciting than I thought it was going to be. What was fulfilling, though, was – you know, a lot of guys on our team have been with me since I was 5 years old, through soapbox derby racing and karting and all sorts of crazy stuff. A lot of those guys are older now – 60, 70, 80 years old. And for them to finally win the Runoffs made it totally worthwhile for me.
“They were all watching at home or in the stands, and I can only imagine what it was like to be with them. I'm a little jealous that I was stuck on the track and not able to watch them enjoy it.”
Watch how Alex won the 2025 Runoffs Formula Vee race:
The Dad Advantage
Interestingly, Alex’s dad David finished just seconds behind his son in ninth at the 2025 Runoffs, notching his own best-ever Runoffs result in his 19th appearance. The pair work together but are not “teammates” in the classic sense: Dad’s Advantage Motorsports is now one of the largest racecar rental and prep shops in western New Jersey, fielding a three-car team at Road America. It was founded in the early 2000s as a small data system manufacturer similar to today’s AIM, MoTeC, or VBOX.
Son Alex began accompanying his dad, a Northeast Division Vee racer, to events long before he could walk.
“By the time I was maybe 8 or so, I was at the racetrack instrumenting other race cars with data systems that were rentals from Advantage Motorsports – kinda like a weekend coaching program,” Alex said.
In the face of cost pressures and rapid technological advances, the small Advantage data systems business wound down, though David carried on racing with his Mysterian Formula Vee while occasionally helping others prep their own cars, working out of a one-car garage.
In 2014, at age 15, Alex got his SCCA competition license and started racing his dad’s venerable Mysterian Vee. He made his Runoffs debut at Daytona in 2015, finishing a creditable seventh, but really marked himself as one to watch the next year at Mid-Ohio, qualifying on the pole in his first visit to the challenging 2.26-mile road course.
(Alex's first Runoffs came in 2015 at Daytona International Speedway. While he did not leave with the win, it set the groundwork for future success. Photo by Jay Bonvouloir.)
“The pole at Mid-Ohio? I probably wasn't mature enough to really do what I should have done with that opportunity,” Scaler said. “We were fast enough, obviously, but made some mistakes during the race.
“I was never truly at the top level in the karting world, and it wasn't until we got to Mid-Ohio – my first time there and we got the pole! – that I thought, ‘Well, maybe I'm good enough to do something more with this.’”
Something More
“Something more” was a one-off Formula Enterprises® effort in 2017 and Formula F foray in 2019. His Vee success and his performances that summer in a four-decade-old Hawke Formula Ford led to his being one of just six drivers invited to Jeremy Shaw’s RRDC-supported Team USA Scholarship shoot-out where, sadly, his age (21) cut short his chances.
Shortly after, though, his off-track career – forensic engineering – was beginning to bear fruit, and he was full speed ahead in a new pursuit which came about almost purely by chance.
Three years earlier, in 2016, Alex had formed his own company in motorsports with a single mission: Generate revenue to fuel a hoped-for racing ladder climb.
“Initially, we did everything from rentals to transporting cars to the racetrack to maintaining cars to building cars from scratch,” Alex explained. “Later, we added designing and manufacturing the disc brake systems which I think a majority of Vees now use.”
Soon, the rapidly expanding rentals and prep business was transferred to dad David’s re-launched Advantage Motorsports effort as Alex set off on a new career path.
“I was in my senior year of engineering school at Rutgers University, living at home 'cause every night until 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning, we were working on race cars. Then COVID hit, racing pretty much shut down, and I thought I probably needed to figure out how to make some actual money doing something else after graduation.
“If I ever wanted to take the next step, supporting Formula Vees wasn’t going to cut it,” he said with a wry chuckle.
Alex recalled that one of his early rental customers was a forensic engineer – an expert witness.
“I always kind of figured if he had the money to pay us to go racing, then he must make enough to not only live but have a little bit left over” – something he never had.
“I took a couple of online courses at Northwestern, to pursue this forensic engineering path, just as a means of trying to make some money.”
As often happens, Scaler almost immediately crossed paths at a Pitt Race event with a fellow Vee driver, Chris Caruso, who was – you guessed it – another forensic engineer. Immediately a friend, this man would end up becoming a mentor to Alex in the expert witness world.
In 2022, working for a big company while also helping his dad with the race car rentals and data analysis as Advantage Motorsports expanded, Scaler took another major step.
“I was working full time, living on three to four hours of sleep every night, and I still wasn’t making enough money to take the next step in racing,” he said. “I decided to pivot and open up my own forensic engineering firm. I had all this race car, vehicle construction, and design experience, after all – and it has paid off.
“Chris owned a company called Automotive Safety Consulting. He was getting ready to semi-retire, so we soon merged businesses into what is now ‘ASC Forensics’.”
Four years later, ASC is flourishing with eight employees and growing, considerable expertise, and an impressive early track record.
Something Borrowed, Something New
While a Daytona 24 Hour entry remains at the top of Scaler’s racing bucket list, he is content for now to savor married life (to Amanda) and plan a Vee title defense at the 2026 National Championship Runoffs.
“I have a little bit of extra flexibility this year because I won the Runoffs and get an automatic invitation. But I'm still trying to figure out where I'm going to go racing to try and stay sharp. We’ve lost Jonathan Weisheit [who passed away in a racing accident last fall] who was a great friend and probably the most competitive guy I could race against in the Northeast.
“Without him – well, I have a feeling we're going to have to start traveling more towards the Midwest to race against the same top 15 guys that were up front at the Runoffs this year.”
In fact, Scaler may be back at Road America this fall with his slippery Scaler Mk1 – a major re-working of the late Peter Pires’ 1985 Predator which the popular NEDiv driver had himself heavily revised. Although that car has proven to be fast, it’s growing long in the tooth, and Scaler “has some ideas…”
“We’ve contemplated building a new car for the Runoffs this year. That's probably a long shot, but we'll see. If not this year then next year at Road Atlanta, for sure!”
Alex Scaler – hardworking, ambitious, humble, fast. For the next year, the President’s Cup is in good hands.
Main photo of Alex Scaler winning the 2025 SCCA National Championship Runoffs Formula Vee race by Rick Corwine.
