The 2024 SCCA® RallyCross® National Championship, held this year at Holleytree Off Road on Oct. 18-20, visited a new home for the first time and left feeling like they’d been there all along.
A grand total of 104 competitors got 11 runs over three days of activity, deciding which of the nine class winners (plus two in side-by-side classes) would go into the history books forever as SCCA National Champions. The event went off without a cloud in the sky, save for those caused by the SCCA’s version of Burning Man – dust and haze coming from the ground up.
Shelton Wright was unofficially deemed King of the Course on Friday, jumping out to a huge lead in Stock All Wheel Drive. He laid down quick times early in the weekend to stack up a significant lead, then he ran the duration of the event completely clean while Timothy Thompson started to crawl back. At the finish, Wright was still an aggregate 5.6sec ahead of Thompson for the gold medal.
(Stock Rear Wheel Driver Winner Logan Altmyer)
Stock Rear Wheel Drive and Stock Front Wheel Drive also featured intense competition. Logan Altmyer was third in his Nissan 240SX after the first heat on Friday, but utilized all 11 runs to perfection to claim a Stock Rear win. Donald Carl followed the exact same script on day one in his Volkswagen Golf GTI, marching his way to the Stock Front win after spotting the field a 3.1sec advantage.
(Stock Front Wheel Drive winner Donald Carl.)
The Prepared category featured some dominating performances. Jason Fuller, Shawn Roberts, and Mark Hill led essentially start to finish in Prepared Front Wheel Drive, Prepared Rear Wheel Drive, and Prepared All Wheel Drive, respectively. How good was Fuller’s driving? His 18.8sec win came in a car that was actually eligible (and ran in) the Stock Front class.
(Prepared Front Wheel Drive winner Jason Fuller.)
(Prepared Rear Wheel Drive winner Shawn Roberts.)
(Prepared All Wheel Drive winner Mark Hill.)
Even with the allowed, well, modifications, the Modified Category might have been the closest of all. The battle in Modified All Wheel Drive was tight, with Mark Macoubrie taking a 0.347sec lead over Warren Elliott. Because of that, Macoubrie received the Hagerty Keepin' It Cool award.
(Modified All Wheel Drive winner Mark Macoubrie.)
Modified Rear Wheel Drive had a lot of car swapping on day three. Kent Hamilton took his final runs in Doug Leibman’s Volkswagen Beetle. Austin Walton went from his own MR2 to Tyler Burchett’s MR2 (that he helped build). After 11 runs, however, it was Leon Drake in what he calls a 1976 Porscharu 914 with the class victory – all in his own car.
(Modified Rear Wheel Drive winner Leon Drake.)
Andy Thomas was 1.599sec quicker than ZB Lorenc in Modified Front Wheel Drive, with Thomas riding the strength of his final few runs in his Toyota Celica to the win.
(Modified Front Wheel Drive winner Andy Thomas.)
Andrew Suprenant and Jonathan Coatney were the inaugural winners of the UTV Sport and UTV Max classes in the first time the category was permitted at RallyCross Nationals.
(UTV Sport winner Andrew Suprenant.)
(UTV Max winner Jonathan Coatney.)
In all, 24 drivers ran the length of the event without a single cone penalty – an impressive feat.
The event location also impressed. In fact, prior to the event’s conclusion, it was tentatively announced that the 2025 RallyCross National Championship would likely take place once again at Hollytree Off Road, this time during the Oct. 17-19 weekend.
'24 RallyCross Nats Official Results
Photos by Dante Donati