Meet Jason Stine, 2025 recipient of the SCCA’s prestigious John McGill Award – racer, woodworker, and, since 2021, one of the major domos of one of the Club’s more interesting “tribes.”
Stine and a trio of paddock pals (Mike Kelley, Jason LaManna, and Jay Creel) hit upon an idea in the wake of peak COVID to boost the fortunes of their H Production class: HP, a sports car racing staple for several decades following its becoming a recognized SCCA class in 1958, was struggling for viability and visibility in the 21st century.
“We were drinking beers around a campfire one night, and one of us said, ‘How do we get back to this?’” Stine remembered. “Grassroots racing. These days Club racers aren’t camping at the track and sitting around the campfire. They’re hauling big rigs, eating dinner at a restaurant, and staying in a hotel.
“We’d all grown up with our dads racing – the old grassroots vibe where the experience of being there meant more than the 90 minutes of track time you got,” he continued.
“So we just started bouncing around ideas. My big pitch was we’ve got to build an HP community, build camaraderie – make it fun for everybody from the Runoffs® champion down to the guy that does one race at his local track and eats ramen during the week to afford it.”
On that crisp 2020 evening, the idea for an H Production points series within the Club fold was hatched, drivers getting points for every SCCA® race run – Regionals, U.S. Majors Tours®, Hoosier Super Tours. Points would be based on the number of cars in the class, the latter incentivizing HP drivers to coordinate with their rivals, hopefully boosting entries and building community.
The first-year feedback was off the charts – “Everyone wanted to do it again!” – and in the comment flow, the idea for an invitational event emerged.
“What if we create a mid-season Runoffs-style event?” Stine thought. “What if I reach out to my Region’s [Ohio Valley] race committee and say, ‘Hey, if we brought 30 cars to our late-summer event at Mid-Ohio, would you give us our own run group? Would you give us a 20-lap race on Sunday? Would you give us a victory lap?’
“And I mean, everyone was like, unanimously, ‘Yes! You get 30 cars, you can have whatever you want, essentially,’” he laughed.
Word spread quickly, and with the noteworthy support of OVR’s Dan Hodge and Jude Summers among others, the first Captn Mikee Cummings H Production Invitational (named in honor of the veteran HP racer) at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2022 boasted 36 entries.
Sprites All ‘Round
Stine’s parents were autocrossers and enthusiasts, and Jason was, almost literally, born at the racetrack
“My dad, Gib, was a car nut since he was a teenager. He and my mom Cheryl both autocrossed, and my brother and I grew up racing karts.”
In 2000, for his 50th birthday, Gib bought well-known HP racer Ken Fahrbach’s immaculately prepared right-hand-drive Bugeye Sprite.
“I went to dad’s Drivers School with Ken, God rest his soul,” said Jason, “and we wrenched on the car while dad was doing all the classroom stuff. That summer is when I really learned about car set-up – the technical side of racing – which drove me to get a bachelor's and a master's in mechanical engineering with a vehicle dynamics specialty at Penn State.”
At age 19, Stine was hired by Goodyear at a career fair. That brought him to Akron, OH, where he now resides.
“I was [at Goodyear] for 20 years, but I left about a year and a half ago to open up my own custom woodworking business [called Burning River Woodworks LLC],” he explained. “I make fully custom, high-end furniture, built-ins, shelves, frames, accents, all that stuff, and it’s been quite an exciting journey getting things up and running.
Jason never drove his dad’s Bugeye, which was parked when Gib passed away in 2019. But he’s now refreshing it for his mom to take to SCCA Track Days, and said he will someday race it in vintage.
In 2010, though, Stine acquired his own HP Austin-Healey.
“The irony is, I was looking at everything but a Bugeye,” he said. “Some Formula Fords, a few E and F Production cars, even a Sports 2000.”
But when Joel McGinley, long-time flagger and a Bugeye racer out of Central Florida Region, suddenly listed his car for sale, Stine reached out, ending up several weeks later with not only his immaculate No. 37 but also new life-long friends
(Jason's search for a race car took him down many roads. Eventually, he settled on a Bugeye.)
“For me, let’s just say it was the deal of a lifetime. Joel and Jan are family to us now. We’ve visited them in Florida several times. They came to our wedding. It was never about the money to them; it was about keeping the car in a family and somebody truly loving it like they did.”
Memory Lane
Although the MG Midgets and A-H Sprites like Stine’s so abundant in the class’ early years have all but disappeared from the SCCA national scene, they are well-remembered in the HP Nationwide Points Championship Presented by LINNspeed and Captn Mikee Cummings Invitational that Stine and friends now work so hard to organize.
“We really push to get 10-plus HP fields, with cash bounties if we get that many cars,” Jason noted. “If a car's been parked for over five years and you bring it back out to the track, you get some bonus points.
“And we named the invitational after Mike Cummings, a long time HP racer who passed away a handful of years ago. In his honor, we also present the Cummings Award to the highest-finishing Spridget.
“People may do one race a year and the invitational is the race they pick now,” Stine said. “It's just so cool to see it all come together. We do social stuff both Friday and Saturday night – a big barbecue potluck where everyone pitches in, with a couple of volunteers manning the grills. And we have a driver's meeting after every session where I give away tires or gas or contingency stuff like that. It's all about having fun and getting the H Production family together for a big reunion.”
Word of mouth backed up by clever social media “advertising” and continued OVR support means Aug. 8-9, 2026, will see the fifth running. Entries are on pace to break the record, Stine said, looking forward to many-time SCCA National Champion Jesse Prather’s first appearance.
Check out the event promo:
A newly created H Production Hall of Fame celebrates the class’ 68-year history. Initial recipients in a 2025 ceremony hosted by SCCA Road Racing Vice President Eric Prill were Randy Canfield, Ray Stone, and Cat Kizer who between them account for eight HP National Championship Runoffs victories.
“At the 2024 Invitational, I caught a young guy looking at LINNspeed’s 60 Years of HP Champions poster, and he was like, ‘Man, I like this, but I only know like three cars on here,’” Stine explained.
“And that got me thinking. You’re here but you don't know Randy Canfield, you don't know Ron Bartell? You don't know 50-60 years of class history if you don't recognize these cars. So, how could we bridge the gap? How to teach the current generation what the class was and who made it what it is today?”
Answer? The HP Hall of Fame.
“I tell you,” Stine continued, “the coolest thing last year was seeing honorees Ray and Cat sitting side by side watching the induction video I made. They’d never met! Seeing them connect, joking and talking and pointing at the screen – ‘Remember this? Remember that?’ – it was really cool to see those two together.
“A young guy who’d done his first Drivers School a month or two before was there with a vintage Midget. He drove the car to our Hall of Fame dinner and parked it right in front. Ray walked over to look at the car and started talking to him. And at the end of the night, Ray asked for his address. ‘He reminds me of myself when I was just starting out,’ Ray said. ‘I want to send him some old memorabilia.’
“It was just cool as hell to see all of that.”
McGill and More
With his primary focus now his woodworking business, Stine still spends a ridiculous amount of time with his HP tribe, on Facebook and working on his own H Production-centered YouTube site, Stine Motorsports (which this Christmas will again debut a Runoffs playlist for you to watch over the holidays).
Thankfully for all this racing stuff, he has the blessing of his wife of six years, Nicole.
“I got her interested in [the sport],” Jason said. “Like I would say the majority of people under the age of 40 in this country, she didn’t know there were people like me doing this thing on weekends. It’s the best-kept secret out there, right? Unless you know someone that does it, you really don't know SCCA Road Racing even exists.
“So, I brought Nicole to Mid-Ohio where I was racing – it was actually the only time she ever met my father before he passed away. And she just lit up, you know. She was like, ‘I never knew people did this. This is awesome.’"
(Nicole has been a staunch supporter of Jason's drive to race.)
“She was apprehensive a little bit at first when I was racing, but she grew to love it – to the point where … We honeymooned in Northern California and we planned to visit Alcatraz. But in the hotel, Nicole saw a flyer advertising the David Love Vintage Races at Sears Point [now Sonoma Raceway]. And she was like, ‘Do you really want to do Alcatraz? Like, is that a bucket list item for you?’ And honestly, I’d heard that it sucks – taking a ferry for 90 minutes to walk around a prison. And she's said, ‘Okay, 'cause I have an idea…’
“She didn't tell me what the idea was; she just said turn left here, turn right, turn left, until I figured it out! So we watched races all day, and I got to meet Joe Carr and some of the Huffaker people that I’d talked to for 20 years but never met in person.
“Pretty cool that on our honeymoon she called an audible to go watch racing.”
Stine has so many stories, and is quick to share them, his enthusiasm for H Production made clear. His work building a tribe with an old-timey vibe under the modern SCCA umbrella is what earned him the 2025 John McGill Award, named after a much-missed fellow Ohio resident tireless in pursuit of his own dream.
Ironically, Stine – who lives “less than 20 miles away from Nelson Ledges as the crow flies” and who received an award honoring the man who dedicated his adult life to that Ohio track – never met McGill and has never driven there.
“I didn’t even know the McGill Award existed until three years ago or so. A fellow HP racer sent me a message letting me know how much they truly appreciated all my efforts for the class, and that they had nominated me for the award. I didn’t win the award that year, but knowing that someone was moved enough to take the time to submit a nomination meant the world.”
“When Eric Prill called me just before the 2026 SCCA National Convention to tell me I’d won the John McGill Award, it was a shock, and a completely humbling moment for me. It was the vindication of all the blood, sweat, and tears that I’ve put into SCCA and the H Production class over the years, and it is such an honor to be recognized by the Club for these efforts.”
“I said it in my acceptance speech, and I’ll say it again here: Although this award bears my name, the recognition truly belongs to the entire H Production community for what we have built together.”
Stine has raised the interest level in an especially historic SCCA class, remembering its roots, focusing on its future, keeping fun in the equation. All things a leader in a successful tribe must do.
Photos courtesy Jason Stine. On-track photo of Jason Stine at Indy by Jeff Loewe.)
