The Super Sweep is the most challenging feat in SCCA® Road Racing. To earn this title, a driver must win a U.S. Majors Tour® Conference Championship, a Hoosier Racing Tire Super Tour Nationwide Points Championship, and a National Championship Runoffs® race, all in a single class in the same year. To clinch the Super Sweep, you need to battle through an entire season, making the best of what’s handed to you, never giving up. For Spec Racer® Ford Gen3 driver Russell Turner, a season that could have gone either way concluded with a plan that – despite the odds – came to fruition, with the spoils being a 2024 Super Sweep title.
“My season went well,” Turner says of the opening round of the Southeast Conference Majors Tour at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but then admits things didn’t stay peachy for long. “It did start off a little rough [at the Sebring Hoosier Super Tour] due to poor qualifying on my part and some early contact in the Saturday race that forced me to retire, and I was unable to improve my starting position for Sunday.”
Then more bad luck came his way.
“I qualified well for the Saturday race at NOLA Motorsports Park, but got knocked off the track in Turn 1 on the start and was only able to get back to seventh.”
Turner was back in the hunt at the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta Majors Tour, then stood on the podium at the VIRginia International Raceway and Watkins Glen International Hoosier Super Tours.
He did what racers do and pushed through, collecting seven podium finishes during the Majors and Super Tour season, putting him on top in the SRF3 points in the Southeast Conference U.S. Majors Tour and placing him as a contender for the Super Tour title heading into the 2024 Runoffs at Road America.
“Running up front in the SRF3 class is always a challenge,” he admits. “This class is stacked with talented drivers. This year's Runoffs was the most top-heavy race I've ever been part of. There were probably 20 drivers that had a legitimate shot of winning.”
The 2024 Runoffs SRF3 race boasted 55 starters, with the top 15 all qualifying within one second of the pole time. For Turner’s performance, he’d qualified second, less than the blink of an eye behind Tire Rack Polesitter Denny Stripling.
“I knew the best chance of winning the Runoffs at Road America was to do it as a team,” Turner says. “Me, Denny Stripling, Dave Ogburn, and Richard Stephens showed up with a plan to make sure one of us came out the winner. It was the first time I've ever seen a plan come out exactly as designed. Qualify well early, hope the other sessions have issues due to cautions or weather, start up front, and fend off anyone attempting to separate us.
“I have to admit that had the race gone green the whole way, I'm not sure our plan would have held.”
As it was, the Runoffs race concluded under caution and Turner took the gold medal followed by Stripling, Ogburn, Bobby Sak, and Stephens. That meant the season’s hotly contested Super Tour points race would be led by Sak, albeit by a hair. Shortly after the checkered flag, though, a post-race penalty moved Sak from third to the back of the field, suddenly placing Turner 12 points ahead of the Super Tour competition. Added to the Runoffs win and the Southeast Conference U.S. Majors Tour title he’d locked in before the Runoffs, and suddenly Turner was one of only two Super Sweep winners in 2024 – the other being Tyler Ladd in E Production.
This feat is special in another way, as it also marks Turner’s second Super Sweep, his first coming in 2023 when he won the title racing in Formula Enterprises® 2.
“I now have a National Championship and a Super Sweep in both classes I compete in,” Turner says. “Next year, I want a Super Sweep in two different classes in the same year. I'm not sure if anyone has ever won a Super Sweep in two different classes, much less during the same season.”
Photo by Stefan Jackowniak
