Thanks to Craig Wilcox for photographs
Lincoln Airpark played host to the second largest solo extravaganza of the year over the Memorial Day weekend. Such a large event was bound to attract high levels of talent, fast cars, tight battles, and fun with friends. The entry list for the 2014 Tire Rack® SCCA® Lincoln ProSolo didn’t disappoint, there were great battles heat after heat.
Coming into the weekend, the forecast was calling for rain both days, so everyone knew they should make the best of the dry runs they received. The closer we got to the start the event, the further the rain was pushed out, which allowed everyone to get dry runs on Day 1. Day 2 wasn’t as fortunate, as rain fell in the morning and a rain event was declared, which means no one improved on their times from Day 1 in the morning session and Day 1 results determined finishing positions.
In order to qualify for the Super Challenge and Ladies Challenge you have to perform well during class competition. There were some very close battles, and then there was Greg McCance in his ESP prepared 2002 Subaru WRX. He put a whooping 2.109 seconds gap on the rest of the stout ESP field to secure the #1 qualifier in the Super Challenge. Greg continues to put the ‘street’ in Street Prepared by driving the car all of the way from Ramona, CA, an 1,100 mile drive to Lincoln Airpark! The #2 qualifier for the Super Challenge was Trevor Jones from Street Index FWD (SF) He make the trip from Onalaska, WI driving his 2014 Ford Focus ST sponsored by Defyant Motorsports | Buschur Racing. Trevor stretched a 1.901 second lead over Greg Reno in his MiniUSA, Baron Mini/BMW, Kuhmo Tire 2010 Mini Cooper.
Several classes had much tighter battles, Sam Strano drove his Stranoparts.com 2012 Chevrolet Corvette to a slim 0.067 victory over Vivek Goel in SSR; Chris Fenter drove a 2009 Mazda MX-5, sponsored by My beautiful wife and girls, to a scant 0.099 second win over Paul Brown in his 2009 Nissan 370Z; Andy Hollis drove his GRM/HVT/949/OSGiken/FastBrakes/Soulspeed 1989 Honda One Lap CRX to a 0.130 second victory over Bob Davis in SP/SM Index B; and Mark Hill piloted his Jayhawk Racing 2006 Mitsubishi E-voh IX to a 0.140 win over Chris Gladu in his 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STi.
The closest battle of the event was in Ladies 1, where Laurie Hyman captured the win with a oh-so slight 0.002 second advantage in her Cobb Surgeline/GT-RR 2012 Nissan GT-R “Godzilla” over Beth McClure-Strelnieks driving the 1999 Porsche Boxster. Laurie sat on her first left side run, but was able to put it together on her last dry run on the right side to take the class by the narrow margin.
By the time the Challenge Rounds began in the afternoon the courses were dry aside from a couple puddles, which leveled the playing field and allowed for some awesome competition in the Challenge rounds. First to take to the course was the Ladies Challenge, which included the Top 16 drivers from the Ladies Classes. There were some solid battles, but when the dust settled the final four battles were #8 Jocelin Huang from L2 vs. #4 Annie Gill from L3 and #2 Kim Whitener from L3 vs. #6 Christy Carlson from L3. In the first match-up Jocelin Huang in her The Alignment Guy 2010 Porsche GT3 bettered Annie Gill in her Thanks Danny!/Chickzilla 2013 Scion FRS. In the second matchup, L3 class winner Kim Whitener from Fort Worth, TX beat Christy Carlson in the Nameless Performance/Bad Panda Motorsports 2013 Subaru BRZ. Annie Gill was able to best Christy in the consolation bracket and win 3rd Place. The finals featured a rematch of the Ladies Challenge final at the last ProSolo round in Mineral Wells between these two women; Jocelin Huang continued her winning ways and defeated Kim and make it two Ladies Challenge wins in a row!
The Bonus Challenge is a chance for competitors that didn’t qualify for the challenge to get in the bracket action, random names are drawn from a hat to fill the eight slot bracket and dial-in times are based on the competitor’s fastest times from the event. The final featured Mark McKnight driving his 1988 Honda CRX Si from STS and Calvin Johnston in his 2002 Porsche Boxster from BS. In the end, Mark McKnight was able to take the win in the Bonus Challenge. For anyone that knows Mark, as you can imagine, he was all smiles.
The Super Challenge featured the top 32 open class qualifiers, after a lot of great competition the final four pairings were #9 Erik Strelnieks from SSM vs. #4 Eric Peterson from SR and #15 Matthew Braun from STR vs. #3 Lane Borg from BS. Erik Strelnieks was fresh off breakout runs in the Hooiser/OS Giken/Jungle Cat Racing 1993 Mazda RX7, but was still able to take the win against Eric Peterson in his Solo Pro & Atomic Empire 2003 Toyota Spyder. In the second pairing Matthew Braun in the PowerPlug 2008 Honda S2000 CR secured the win when Lane Borg red lighted the first run in his Stranoparts.com 2004 Chevrolet Corvette. Lane Borg and Eric Peterson faced off in the consolation bracket; Lane put down some smoking fast runs and won on what were breakout times to secure third place in the Super Challenge.
Those wins setup a heavy weight final round, where Matthew Braun was able to best Erik to take the Lincoln ProSolo Super Challenge win. This was Matthew’s third Super Challenge win of his career; he took two Super Challenges victories in one season several years back.
Additional information, including full results, of The Tire Rack SCCA Lincoln ProSolo can be found here. More information on the entire Tire Rack SCCA Solo program is available at www.scca.com/Solo. Follow SCCA on Twitter @SCCAOfficial and like the Club on Facebook at Facebook.com/SCCAOfficial.
The next round of the Tire Rack® SCCA® ProSolo Series® will be held at Crows Landing on June 7th-8th in San Francisco, CA.
