To: SCCA ProSolo Enthusiasts

From: Howard Duncan, Senior Director of Solo and Rally

Hi folks and a belated Happy New Year!

I will keep this short as I know many of you are busy preparing for the 2016 Tire Rack National Solo season and the ProSolo Series in particular. The plans for the coming season are mostly modest and designed to build on our recent improvements.

The hopes from a year ago of establishing two categories of participation for 2016, "Pro" and "Club", have had to be set aside until 2017 at the earliest as all the changes at SCCA did not allow for any additional bandwidth to take on this big change in the ProSolo Series. For such a plan to work requires a relatively long lead time to develop rules, procedures, and the accompanying marketing / promotion plans. Again, with everything going on in Topeka, there simply was not the capacity to do that in the second half of 2015. We did consider adding a single pilot "Pro" class for 2016, but that idea came too late to be included in the contingency proposals that went to manufacturers and vendors. Without contingency support it would not have been much of a true test of the concept. However, since this has been an objective of mine for over 20 years, I am now more committed than ever to seeing this through before my time at SCCA comes to an end. Therefore, right after the SCCA National Convention I will be sending out an overview of the concept and encouraging input, and even involvement in the development and activation of the program, with the objective of having the 2017 plan completed prior to the 2016 Finale event.

Back to plans for 2016:

• The 2016 ProSolo Rules will be up on the SCCA web site by January 19
• The 2016 classes in these rules are largely the same as 2015
• For those classes using an Index for scoring, we have returned to a ProSolo Index (PSI) that the factors have been derived from ProSolo results.
• Points scoring will be a little different in that class points will be based on the best 2 events in class, no matter the number of events run. We realize this may mean that more folks come into the Finale with the same number of points and therefore it puts more emphasis on the Finale. However, this is similar to other sports where our Saturday runs at the Finale roughly equate to playoffs and the Sunday become the Super Bowl. This points plan should help the Regions that host events that have traditionally had relatively low attendance such as Packwood, Mineral Wells, and Blytheville. Strong events assure Regions wanting to host events, improves competition, and increases opportunities for Series growth.
• Courses: in an effort to de-emphasize a bit the importance of the launch and the beginning straight, we are stretching out the course length guidelines by 5 seconds from 2015 and we are shortening the first straight to approximately 150 feet before the driver has to begin, well, driving – some sort of maneuver that will preclude drivers from just keeping their foot to the floor for nearly the length of a football field.
• We are adding a class! Well, not really :) For years some of our more "experienced" drivers have been comparing their times to see how they compare with each other. We have decided to formalize this by creating the Masters Class for those 62 years old and older. They will run in their normal ProSolo class and then we will index score them against each other to determine who is the Grand Master at each event and the winner of the soon to be coveted "Get Off My Lawn" trophy. More on this as soon as I can remember the details.
• We are making substantial financial investments in the ProSolo Series, as well as the National Solo program as a whole; thank you SCCA Board of Directors for your support! We are replacing the aging canopies attached to our tech trailer and they will be larger to better match our new trailer. We are also replacing our two trucks so there is less of a chance of an event being cancelled at the last moment because we could not get there due to a breakdown. Most of you are probably not aware of how close we came to this scenario several times over the last two seasons and we felt we could not continue to depend on our good luck much longer. However, the really big news for ProSolo is that we are in the process of replacing most of the components of our ProSolo timing system and should have it operational by the first event of the year. This is a significant upgrade and investment, which is only justifiable because of the Pro/Club concept I mentioned above. So not only will this improve our operational efficiency for 2016, it is symbolic of our commitment to the program and its evolution in the years to come. I will pass long more details as this progresses.

Well, there you have the overview of what is in store for 2016 and a peek at the years ahead. We are looking forward to starting off the season in April at the "Second Annual Last El Toro ProSolo" (hopefully there will be a Third Annual, but unlikely) and finishing up the regular season on the concrete at Blytheville, before heading to Lincoln and the Championship Finale event.

Look for more National Solo and ProSolo news next month.

See you at the starting line!!

Photo by Rupert Berrington