Jeff Kiesel took his 7^th consecutive championship by winning E-Modified.  The win moved him into 2^nd place on the all time open class consecutive list, four behind John Thomas.  Kiesel’s streak is the longest active streak, one ahead of Mark Madarash and two ahead of Julian Garfield.     Formula Junior driver, Julian Garfield extended his undefeated streak to five this year with a win in Formula Junior A.  Though not an official National Championship due to FJ’s status as a supplemental class, Julian is now tied with E. Paul Dickinson for second on the longest undefeated list and only trails Gene Hanchett by one.  As both Dickinson and Hanchett eventually lost, Garfield’s undefeated streak is not only active, but he is also the only driver with at least 5 wins who has never lost.   Bill Goodale (photo) and Frank Stagnaro will have to wait another year to see if they can break their tie atop the trophy count list.  Bill took the 3^rd trophy in A-Modified and Frank claimed a trophy for 5^th in C-Prepared giving each a total of 31.  The feat is even more impressive given that neither is a Solo Nationals 100%-er.     Dick Berger, Charlie Clark (photo), Rocky Entriken, Rick Ruth, Susan Anderson and George and Dee Schweikle each extended their 100% Solo Nationals participation to 40 events.  To put that in perspective, the total number of national championship event runs the group has taken is equal to the total number of runs recorded over the two courses on a single day at this year's event (1638).   Of the 15 past and current recipients of the Driver of Eminence award competing this year, only 2 claimed Championships, Jeff Cashmore (2010) and Andy McKee (2008).  This year the highest driving honor in the sport went to Sam Strano (photo), who became the 4^th out of the last 5 recipients to not claim a championship in the same year as the award. Solid proof that Solo Nationals is tough, even for the legends.     2012 saw 21 first time champions crowned, and an additional 9 first time winners claim a supplemental class win.  Of these 30 first time winners, 3 rookies took championships and 3 more won supplemental classes.  Perhaps the most impressive of these was Lana Tsurikova who moved herself from BSP to SM so that she would have someone to compete against and ended up taking the championship, as a rookie.     Street Touring was the largest single category at Solo Nationals despite being tied with Prepared for the 2^nd smallest amount of classes, at 6.  ST had the two largest classes, STX and STR, each with 60 total drivers.  The category also had the second smallest class in the event, STF with 11, 3 more than A-Modified.  When Road Tire’s 77 entrants are factored in, nearly 30% of the event opted to run in classes for non-race tires.       The narrowest margin from first to last trophy in an open class this year was 1.299 in D-Prepared, won by Drew VanderPloeg (photo).  All totaled, 7 open championship classes managed to squeeze all their award winners in under 2 seconds.  The largest trophy margins were in A-Mod (8.752), EM (7.052) and CP (6.851).  Dan Wasdahl’s  5.210 winning margin in AM was a bigger gap than the trophy margin in all but 7 open classes and Mike Maier's margin of 2.717 was a bigger gap than the trophy margin in  STC (10 trophies), STS (11 trophies), or STR (14 trophies).   Thanks to Rocky Entriken and his "Solo Stats" book for providing the data for this article and Perry Bennett Photography for providing images.