Welcome to the tropical Pacific Northwest, where SCCA’s National Solo program visited the picturesque Old Hampton Mills Lumber Yard in Packwood, WA, for the Tire Rack SCCA Packwood Solo National Tour on July 12-14, 2024.
Tropical and picturesque, you say? Of course! Why else would the Northwest Region host a luau for the welcome party across the street from the facility at the Longmire Brewery? Then, when the temps each day reached the low 90s in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, the event lived up to its reputation.
The site itself is a popular one on SCCA’s National Solo scene, and for this Solo National Tour, John Hunter laid out open, fast courses on the asphalt surface for the 257 drivers to navigate cones and (should they wander near the course) elk.
In short, the event was a success – and here’s some of what happened.
Class Action
Dallas Cutler’s Mitsubishi Evo came hard for the Xtreme Street A class and walked away as their king. Cutler was quickest each day with his four inflated tires – which jokingly made it “unfair” for the rest of the class trying to catch him. After six runs, he’d amassed 1.622sec on Chris Bartley’s Mitsubishi, with a gap of 2.156sec from Bartley to third-place finisher John Toothaker in a Scion FR-S.
We generally avoid conspiracy theories in this space, but if we were so inclined, we might take a look at Solo Spec Coupe. Taylour Wargo, who was gathering information and photos all weekend long for SCCA’s National Solo Facebook page, co-drove with course designer Hunter. Anyone scanning the results will see Hunter won the 11-driver class, followed by Wargo just 0.411sec behind. But their dominance was no conspiracy – the two National Championship contenders were genuinely quick, bringing home two of the four class trophies at Packwood. Proving their speed, the results also show that there was more than a one-second gap from Wargo to third-place finisher Jordan Valgardson. In fourth was Brian Duncan, another 0.265sec back.
The good news for Stephen King is that his C Street Prepared Mazda Miata made the tow all the way from Tempe, AZ, and ran flawlessly for a 0.9sec class win at Hampton Mills. That same Mazda Miata, however, only ran flawlessly for his six runs, as the main relay gave up the ghost after his third run of day two, leaving the car motionless on grid. It did its job at the Solo National Tour, though, and King kept his winner’s trophy.
Stephanie Boyle may not have won the Ladies Bump Class, but she got an experience to remember at her first Solo National Tour event. Boyle was selected as the SCCA Women on Track Driver Development, um, driver for the Packwood event. She traveled from her British Columbia home and drove a new-to-her car (CRX, instead of a Miata) to participate. While on site, she received coaching and guidance from Tasha Mikko (who, herself, had a great weekend finishing sixth in the Street Touring Ultra class).
With a sold-out event sporting nearly 260 entries completing more than 1,500 autocross runs over just two days, there was a lot more action than what we just talked about – check out the event results for more, and head to the aforementioned Facebook page for additional coverage.
Stick Around
Three Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Tours (Chicago, Romulous, and Grissom) remain before it’s time to cowboy up to Lincoln, NE, for the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships – but the Packwood site didn’t exactly become a ghost town on Sunday afternoon. This upcoming weekend is the final “regular season” Tire Rack SCCA ProSolo Series event taking place at Packwood prior to the ProSolo Championship Finale in Lincoln – making it an action-packed week in the Northwest.
Photo by Taylour Wargo
