The Tire Rack SCCA® Finger Lakes Solo® National Tour at the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, NY, was the grand finale to this year’s Solo National Tour “regular season,” and many who attended that event will head off to Lincoln, NE, for the Sept. 1-5, 2025, Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships with stars in their eyes.

The Finger Lakes event was hosted by, as you might expect, SCCA’s Finger Lakes Region, led by event chairs Scott Moller and Mark Krueger (with an assist from Emilio Moran). Course Designer Tom O’Gorman laid out two challenging but fun courses that provided two different driving experiences — Saturday was very technical and tough to get right, but incredibly rewarding when you did. Sunday was fast and flowing and required a healthy mix of bravery and precision.

The “welcome party” was more than a solitary gathering — it stretched throughout the entire weekend. Finger Lakes Region provided delicious BBQ prepared by Nick Pasternack and Carrie Goetz with assistance from the SCCA Assistant Equipment Manager Chris Kunkel, and other Finger Lakes Region members. Goetz cooked for two days to prepare without even competing in the event — showing it takes a village of dedicated volunteers to put on such a good show (and good eats).

The weather was near perfect in the Finger Lakes, as it tends to be this time of year. It was dry all weekend with sunny skies, temps in the 50s and 60s in the mornings, getting into the 70s and low 80s in the afternoons. This was a pleasant change from the oppressive heat and humidity competitors have experienced for the majority of this season.

Class Battles

DJ Alessandrini and his co-driver Alex Piehl were the main attractions in D Street, with Alessandrini taking the celebratory spray for winning the class in their shared Toyota GR86. Alessandrini was 0.465sec up at the finish to taste victory.

Just 0.489sec separated the winners in Super Street Touring®. Grant Reeve’s Corvette Z06 led the way on Vitour tires, followed by the Bridgestone-shod Corvette of Mark Ponusky.

E Street Touring was exceptionally tight. Matt Huchro and Eric Scholz separated from the field in their NA-generation Miatas, with Huchro scoring the win by 0.274sec.

Ladies Street Tire Bump was a battle between two A Street Touring MX-5s, pulling any indexing out of the final decision. Jen Fox was 0.091sec quicker than a charging Langlee King Clark over the two days to win the class — Clark’s performance was incredibly impressive when you consider she didn’t score a cone-free run at all on Saturday. Then a scant 0.058sec back in third sat Emily Whitaker

Jen Fox’s performance as the fastest in the Ladies index class landed her the SCCA Women on Track Pay It Forward award, which allows her to invite a female from her Region to experience a National Solo event, with Women on Track covering that entry fee.

Catch all the other action from the weekend in the class results.

Class Results

Next Up: The Big One

All that’s left for the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Tour this season is the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships at Lincoln Airpark, running Sept. 1-5. There, more than 1,200 competitors (likely, more than 1,300) will be on hand for the four-day celebration of autocross that crowns National Champions in each class.

More information is incoming as the event approaches. Look for that, and coverage from the event when it happens, at scca.com.

Photos by Chris Yoder

The Tire Rack Burns Flat SCCA® ProSolo® Series became the Lincoln 2.0 ProSolo just a week before the event due to unforeseen circumstances with the original site in Bruns Flat, OK, but those who attended saw an event go off without a hitch — and they got some extra runs on the Lincoln concrete, which will undoubtedly pay dividends come the Aug. 30-31, 2025, Tire Rack SCCA ProSolo Championship Finale.

First things first: the short notice pivot would not have been possible without the efforts of Nebraska Region, led by Tony Mitera with support from Mark Walker. The home team was able to smooth the way with MiDiv participants; it’s tradition that this weekend at Lincoln sees a repeat of last year’s Solo® Nationals courses, a rarity in the autocross world.

Rather than combine the two events into one, both events ran side by side — the Lincoln Airpark site is THAT huge.

A giant thanks goes to the local participants, who only ran the 2024 West Course on the first day and had to run that course in reverse for day two of their local event. Kudos also to the Lincoln Airpark leadership, who gave last-minute approval for the additional space needed for the weekend, making the dual event possible.

Roger Johnson originally designed courses for the Burns Flat pavement and then took on adapting the same general course to the Lincoln site. Once the initial layout was set up by staff, Brad Smith and Riley Heaton put together slight changes which resulted in a fantastic weekend of challenging and exciting courses to compete on.

With logistics out of the way, Jim McNeal with the Rebels Car Club provided a welcome party dinner Friday afternoon as well as lunch on Saturday for participants of both events. Seasonably cooler temps prevailed for the weekend, and there was rain to start the Challenge rounds on Sunday.

MiDiv participants were given the opportunity to get a taste of ProSolo Saturday afternoon when fun runs were offered for anyone interested in checking it out. Six drivers took the National event up on the offer, and will likely return for a ProSolo at a later date.

Class Action

Though the late venue change meant a relatively small field, the battles still stayed true to form.

Brad Smith and Jason Hobbs topped the Race Tire Index that was actually just an F Mod battle from top to bottom. Smith’s Doofwagon was 0.333sec in front of Hobbs’ Novakar at the finish.

Race Tire 2 was slightly less deafening, but even closer. Erik Strelnieks and his D Prepared Mazda Miata earned the top spot ahead of Pat Washburn’s E Prepared Honda Civic by 0.101sec.

When it comes to close, Ladies Class 3 took the cake. Meredith Brown posted her times in her SSC Scion FR-S, then waited as Laney Blume tried to close the gap in her G Street Honda Civic Si. Brown’s times were 0.011sec to the good as she took the win.

Ladies Class 1 saw not only Andrea Albin take a dominating win in the Doofwagon, but it also saw Evynne Fair take to the class battle with additional knowledge, as she was the event’s SCCA Women on Track Driver Development Program recipient, receiving coaching from Cindy Duncan.

Cindy Duncan, we should add, won Ladies Class 2 in a similar fashion as Albin.

Check out more of the action in the class results.

Class Results

Challenges

On to Sunday’s Challenge action, presented by Vitour Tire.

It turns out, it pays to volunteer. Rich Dao stepped over from the MiDiv event to help work the Super Challenge in exchange for an entry into the Bonus Challenge. In his first ever ProSolo experience, Dao made the most of the opportunity and dominated the Bonus Challenge in his GR Corolla.

It was a great weekend for Meredith Brown. She kept her hot streak through the Ladies Challenge, winning in the final over Cindy Duncan. Things didn’t end too badly for Blume, either, who won the consolation round over Ladies Class 1 winner Andrea Albin.

Billy Davis was already leading the JCJ Cup standings entering Lincoln (nee Burns Flat), and that won’t change. Davis drove his Porsche 718 Cayman to the Bump Class win and then rolled through the Challenge, topping Tyler Kvelko in the final to up his point total entering the Finale in a month’s time.

What’s Next

We all know what’s next for the Tire Rack SCCA ProSolo Series schedule: The Tire Rack SCCA ProSolo Championship Finale, taking place in Lincoln, NE, on Labor Day weekend as part of the traditional ProSolo/Solo National Championships double.

It’ll be intense.

Follow along on scca.com to get more information as the event approaches.

Photos by Laura Harbour

If you’re anything like us, your memory’s a little hazy for the last 25 years. You’re confident you got married at some point, and you’re pretty sure you had kids, but outside of that, time flew by and you don’t know where it went. But the cars of the last 25 years…oh yes, you remember those. And so does SCCA® partner Hagerty.

(What is Hagerty, the Official Insurance Partner of the SCCA, doing creating automotive content? Fact is, Hagerty does more than offer specialty automotive insurance. The company covers you during track days, transport, and more – including content on hagerty.com/media and via its Drivers Club magazine. Find out more on Hagerty’s website.)

In a recent article, Hagerty’s editors compiled a list of the most memorable cars of the last 25 years, and while you can’t remember what you had for dinner last night, you’ll recall each and every vehicle in this article.

“The idea [for the article] came to us when we looked at the calendar and realized the 21st century was a quarter finished,” the article reads. “Here’s what happened next: We each wrote down our own list of the vehicles we thought met the criteria for inclusion. The criteria were pretty relaxed: The vehicle had to be in production for at least one model year between 2000 and 2025. And, well, that’s it. We applied no mass metrics, leaving it up to the individual list makers to champion their selections. We combined all those lists into one really long list, and then the Zoom staff meetings began.”

Discussions, debates, and arguments later, and the listing was complete.

So what’s on the list? A lot of awesomeness, and some not-so-great vehicles. This is, after all, a listing of the most memorable cars, not the best cars.

For the entire listing, as well as explanations as to why these vehicles made Hagerty’s list of the most memorable cars of the last 25 years, you’ll need to read the article, but we’ll give you a preview in bullet-point format of the ones that caught our eye:

And, of course:

We’ve only listed 15 cars, so there’s obviously more on the list – cars you’ll remember, although your thoughts might not be as fond as they are for the vehicles listed above.

Check out the article to read all about it. Trust us, it’s a fun trip down memory lane.

Photo courtesy Hagerty