The penultimate day of competition has wrapped for the 53rd running of the Tire Rack SCCA® Solo® National Championships at Lincoln Airpark. This year’s theme is “video games,” and Thursday saw players across 40 different car classes having #funwithcars around one of two courses. Drivers now get to take a break, work on cars, and develop strategies before staging at start lines again on Friday.
An event that is winners-take-all – happening Sept. 7-11, 2026, in Nebraska’s capital city of Lincoln – will have its second set of victors Friday. However, before then, there will be a lot more action as drivers swap courses for another day of intense competition that is a Far Cry better than any video game.
Keep an eye on the final day of competition with a live, real-time audio broadcast from the East Course found here, or the West Course live audio broadcast here. Current results can also be viewed at the Solo Nats Timing webpage.
Below are short recaps from some of Thursday’s happenings on both courses.
West Course Thursday Recap
The first cars on the West Course today were Club Spec Mustangs, launching the class into its journey to its very first SCCA National Championship. David Gushwa was first on course, but by the end of the heat, it was Andrew Canak earning top billing, sitting ahead of Randy Adkins, Kristo Kukk, Ben Edmiston, and Clarke LaCelle, along with 37 other drivers in this extremely popular class. Canak’s 0.276sec lead is a good one, but this story is far from over as the class faces the faaaaast East Course for Friday’s competition.
Heat 2’s C Street competition saw nearly as many drivers as in CSM, with a margin for the lead about half that of the Mustang class. Another familiar name topped this list, too, with Julian Garfield 0.133sec ahead, leading Andrew Aul, Jack Crissey, Sean Velandia, and Brett Caine for the top five. The gap from first to fifth? 0.447sec. C Street is so competitive that you have to go as far back as 16th place before you find the driver who is exactly (to the thousandth) one second behind Garfield.
A fun one in Heat 3 (a grouping that includes SSP, CPL, DM, CSML, and CAM-C) is the battle for the first National Championship title in CAM-C. Ryan Otis leads this field, but only by 0.101sec over Dave Schotz. Jeff Wong sits in third, with Jacob Crow breaking up the Camaro party with his Mustang in fourth.
C Street Ladies in Heat 4 is beginning to look like a runaway, with Fan Shen leading the all-MX-5 class with a time nobody can touch. Her 49.731 is the only sub-50sec run in the group, giving her a 0.846sec advantage over the 10-car field. Lana Portanova is in second, with 2024 Wendi Allen Scholarship recipient Ashley Weaver fourth.
The final group of the day was Heat 5, and it saw Laney Blume dominate in G Street Ladies with a 1.59sec margin over Shanna Richardson; Robert Lewis drop the hammer in C Prepared with a 0.740sec lead over Tommy Pulliam; Jackson MacLeod grab the lead over his dad Lefty in F Modified by 0.277sec; and Nicole Wong lead Lacey Otis by 0.205sec in CAM-C Ladies.
East Course Thursday Recap
Let’s start with Heat 1, because not only were they first out on Thursday morning but D Street was just about as close as it gets. Darian Taggart is one up on the field, leading AJ Whitaker by just 0.018sec. It’s not a two-man race, though. The top 15 are within a second, with Alex Piehl, Anthony Nadeau-Poulin within a half-second of the lead, and Michael Yanase just outside. The twins are all up front – a Subaru BRZ for Taggart and Toyota GR86s for Whitaker and Piehl, but Nadeau-Poulin and Yanase follow in a BMW M3 and Honda Civic, respectively.
If we’re looking for close at the top, that honor goes to E Street Touring Ladies. Shelby Redding put down her best time in her Honda Civic CRX on run two, but Neelu Yeoh’s third run was only 0.010sec behind.
The CAM category is a National Championship this year, and CAM-T was first out of the box on Thursday. That makes J.J. Mallrich the first official leader in the class, with his 1999 Camaro Z28 just 0.282sec ahead of Keith Lamming’s 1968 Camaro. Lamming’s best run came on his first run, and we expect this to get exciting tomorrow. CAM Sport is shaping up to be a classic on Friday as well, where Josh Peek leads the way in his 2011 Corvette. Not by much, though as Cody Hunt is just 0.183sec behind.
They’re not really spec, but the MX-5s of C Street Touring are doing what very similar MX-5s do – but the result is in the driver’s hands. After day one, it’s Vivek Goel in front of Will Teller by just 0.123sec. Kevin Wenzel and Mike Casino are within a half second of Goel’s time, and the top nine are within a second. Friday is going to cook on the West Course.
Enjoy Lincoln Airpark Solo Nats from Afar
No matter where you are on the planet, enjoy the Solo Nats experience through the Tire Rack SCCA Solo or SCCAOfficial pages on Facebook. Fun can also be discovered on the SCCAOfficial Instagram page, and even more stuff at the SCCAOfficial TikTok page.
Additional coverage will be posted to YouTube’s SCCAOfficial page. And don’t forget to check out SCCA.com for daily articles, with multiple articles posting per day during the Solo Nationals! Also sign up for the weekly SportsCar® News newsletter if you’d like those articles to end up in your email inbox.
Photo: Ryan Otis leads the 27-car CAM-C class at the halfway point of competition as the class is poised on crowning its very first SCCA National Champion.
Photo by Jay Bonvouloir
