Inside One of the Best Runoffs Races of 2023

It’s not hyperbole to say one of the best performances of the 2023 SCCA® National Championship Runoffs at VIRginia International Raceway came in Super Touring® Under (STU). That race witnessed drama from the moment the green flag flew up until the last car passed under the checker 15 laps later. Of the 14 racers in the class who took to the track for that Oct. 1 race, Chip Herr not only scored the win, but his performance was the talk of the paddock.

Herr qualified second in his Warwick Autopark/Carbotech/Hoosier Audi A4 – the same car he used to run in World Challenge Touring Car competition – and wasted no time battling for the lead. His pursuit for Runoffs gold seemingly came to a dramatic end when he slid off track in Turn 3 of the opening lap, his Audi impacting the tire wall.

You already know how this story ends: Herr rejoined the field at the back of the pack and set to charging through the field – which he did, winning the event and earning his first SCCA National Championship title.

The complete race can be seen here:

But the race is only part of the story.

Herr’s journey to pro racing victories and Runoffs gold began years earlier. “It simply started off as crewing for my dad in SCCA at the MARRS races at Summit Point because he was racing with buddies of his, and I got to learn to crew a car when I was in the 10- to 15-year-old range,” Herr revealed on a recent episode of the “Inside the SCCA” podcast. “When I got to 16, I did a Drivers' School at Summit Point. [I] obviously took a liking to road racing and had no idea where I was going to head with it. Honestly, I thought we were just going to race Regional and try to win a MARRS championship – that was like a big deal because there are a lot of fast drivers in that series.”

While Herr is largely known for wheeling an Audi, his racing career began the way so many do: In a Miata. “Spec Miata really helped me get started,” Herr said. “Mazda was really a huge help in getting me in Spec Miata and Pro Spec Miata and Miata Cup and the ARRC. We started winning everything we went to and running up front.”

In the early 2000s, Herr was eyeing a professional racing career – and somehow, it all came together. “World Challenge in ’04, and got hired by some teams – it kind of took off in 2005 and just started to get hired each year to run World Challenge,” he said. “[I] did some Grand-Am with some teams and drove with different manufacturers and got some opportunities to race World Challenge GT, which is always awesome. Those guys were a fantastic group of drivers, and it was an honor to race against those guys.”

The economy took a downturn around 2008, and that left Herr without a ride. Still, racing opportunities arose, and he took them. “When the economy got tough, [I] went to the Dominican Republic racing Touring Cars that were ex-World Challenge cars and did that from 2010 to ’19, so [that] kind of kept me busy while having twin girls and getting married and co-owning a pre-owned car dealership in sales and service.”

Back to the 2023 Runoffs, Herr had some decisions to make before the STU race. “I basically rolled the dice,” he explained. “I looked at the weather and I knew it was going to be about 80 degrees…. Like most guys I was trying a different tire setup to get the fastest lap time. I really wanted the pole and I tried to figure out how to get drafts and tried to figure out how to strategically get a good qualifying lap or maybe catch a draft behind the Porsche or maybe Moser or anybody.”

Herr had qualified on soft Hoosier A7s, but he’d hedged his bet all week long to ensure the best options were available come race day. “When race day came…I had brand new A7s, I had scrubbed A7s, and I had scrubbed R7s,” Herr said on the podcast. “So I had three different opportunities to put in the car before the race.”

Herr opted for the R7s, and, as we know, lap one brought Herr’s single-car crash – likely the result of cold tires. “Looking back, I should have scrubbed the tires a little more aggressively,” Herr revealed. “I’m a huge fan of the Hoosier tires, whether they’re As or Rs. I could have run the As and I would have been competitive because I would have been fighting with those guys with the same time, but I felt the R was a better choice – but the problem is, I didn’t have any heat in them.”

That was only the first seven minutes of the 43-minute Inside the SCCA podcast. Want to know more? Listen or watch below: