Chilly mornings that warmed up to beautiful and sunny were the conditions for the May 30-June 1, 2025, Tire Rack SCCA® Solo National Tour at Grissom Aeroplex – a popular spot located just a handful of minutes west of Bunker Hill, IN.
Over the course of the weekend, nearly 170 drivers took shots at the Charles Nienhouse-designed courses to see who would come out on top in what is now officially the summer leadup to the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships.
If the weekend at Grissom was any indication, the battles are going to be intense come Lincoln in September.
Here's what happened...
Class Battles
The well-run Indy Region-hosted event saw drivers hit the course around 9am, with Heat 1 consisting of a bundle of Street classes, plus some Street Touring®s and Street Prepareds taking their own shots at the concrete runway.
In those Street classes, margins of victory only came in two flavors: Dominating or nail biting. For example, Chris Shieldsmith was untouchable in A Street, taking the class win by 1.087sec. In G Street, that was ratcheted up a notch by John Formula Azevedo with a 1.256sec margin of victory. While those all seem like a lot, Jon Schwartze put the hurt on in B Street with his 2.211sec victory.
Yet that’s not the entire story, because while DJ Alessandrini was the one to beat all weekend in D Street, his win came with a 0.402sec margin that was largely earned on day one. Meanwhile in C Street, Edward Fisher eked out a scant win over that eight-car class by just 0.154sec.
Ladies Street Tire Bump’s Thenmozhi Elayaperumal really laid the pressure on for the 12-driver field. In the process of winning the class in her Club Spec MX-5 by an impressive 0.959sec margin, she also scored the SCCA Women on Track Pay It Forward certificate for being the fastest woman in the Ladies Index class – this gives her a free event entry to a National Solo event. The twist is, she can’t use that certificate herself; instead, she needs to gift it to a woman in her Region who’s looking to try out National Solo competition.
Getting to even more of that nail-biting stuff, one of the closest battles of the weekend came in Heat 3’s A Street Touring. Cameron Asbury left Saturday with a 0.054sec advantage over Chip Manuel, with Raymond Dsouza, Jeremy Hess, Andrew Salazar, and more in the hunt. Come Sunday, Manuel got the win, but just like on Saturday, this class could have gone at least four different ways. Manuel’s margin at day’s end was 0.038sec over Salazer, with Dsouza another 0.123sec back. Asbury, meanwhile, got shuffled to one spot out of the trophies.
What was the closest contest at Grissom? For that we return to Heat 1, but this time we talk about G Street Touring. There, Mark Stevens led the field into Sunday with a 0.187sec buffer over Chris Yoder. For his part, Yoder’s spectacular final run on Sunday was nearly good enough for the top spot – but that “nearly” was short by 0.008sec.
What was the competition like in the other classes? For that, check out the class results…
No Rest for the Wicked
The Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Tour is rapid fire this month, with Brunswick, ME, being the next competition location, taking place June 6-8 as part of a doubleheader with the Tire Rack SCCA ProSolo Series. Then on June 13-15, the Solo National Tour heads to Concord, NC, for the Charlette National Tour at zMAX Dragway.
None of that’s to mention the four Solo National Tours in July.
Click the link to find a Solo National Tour near you, then get out there and have some #funwithcars.
Photos by Chris Yoder
