While the Solo Stats book is unofficial, it’s also as official as it gets when it comes to statistics and facts about the Tire Rack SCCA® Solo® National Championships. The book contains a list of every single person who has entered the event since the event’s creation in 1973. It also includes facts, listings, and other information that the heartiest autocrossers in this Club would appreciate. And, as luck would have it, the 2024 edition of Rocky Entriken’s Solo Stats is now available.
While the Solo Stats book is not exactly a page-turner, it is a tome any Region historian would find useful, and any Solo aficionado would treasure. A chapter lists every member of each Region to have won a championship, tallies all of the trophy winners, and the Alpha Lists chapter has the complete finishing record of every driver who’s ever competed during the event’s 51 runnings.
What lies below is just a small taste of the information to be found in the 668 pages of the latest Solo Stats, which can be purchased on Amazon (search “Solo Stats Rocky,” or just click here). You can also get a searchable PDF electronic version by contacting Rocky directly at rocky@spitfire4.com.
Record Book, Pg. 1
Here’s the first page of the Record Book chapter of Solo Stats, Edition 51, chronicling the history of the Solo Nationals:
Karen Babb and John Thomas are the winningest drivers at the Tire Rack SCCA Solo Nationals, but Ginette Jordan and Jeff Kiesel are closing in.
Babb, Northwest Region, at 20 wins between 1983 and 2005, tops the all-time and Women’s lists. Of late, she’s been in an E Street Miata, finishing second twice but no wins. Jordan, New England Region, since picking up a ride in Geoff Zimmer’s “Lamborbunni” VW Rabbit has won three times in the past four years, pushing her total to 16.
Thomas for many years ran out of Mississippi Region but now calls Central Florida home. He has 18 wins, 17 of them between 1991 and 2010, mostly in Tom Lombardo’s Honda Civic and a few in his own Datsun 240Z. After an absence of almost a decade, he returned in Dwayne Komush’s rare-bird Toyota Starlet and won DP in 2022 for his 18th win. He was entered in 2024 but was DNS.
Meanwhile, Kiesel, from Cal Club Region, has lost only once since 2006, mostly in his toothy, green rotary-powered bugeye Sprite, and snagged his 17th championship this year. Fun fact: that one loss, in 2018, was to Ron Ver Mulm, whose iconic orange Camaro broke down and he borrowed a ride in Kiesel’s bugeye for his winning run.
In 1973 the editor of SportsCar magazine called to ask if I would cover the inaugural Nationals at Mid-America Raceway in Wentzville, MO. Well, sure! When I learned the post-event results would likely just list best times (which, in fact, they did), I got permission to steal the scoreboards so I could glean the sequence of how a driver won their class. That’s how I have the complete results of that event, and several through the next decade until publishing full results became the norm 10 years later.
In 1974, SportsCar called again, and I went to Lake Geneva, WI, (my first trophy finish) to cover the second Nationals, and realized there was no such thing as a press guide for the event. If I needed one, I had to make my own, which is how I began keeping the records. A few years later, banquet emcee Roger Johnson learned I had them and asked for a copy. Then others asked. And some queried who’d done the most of this or that, adding pages to my book. What I once provided as a tractor-feed printout of my records eventually grew to become Solo Stats.
Here are some items from other pages….
History Lesson
At that first event, host St. Louis Region thought they might be doing well to get 100 entries, and were astounded when 224 signed in, including 46 from the East Coast and 17 from the West Coast.
Right from the very beginning, San Francisco Region was a strong presence at the Solo Nationals. Their southern California counterpart, Cal Club Region, not so much. At the first Nationals (only 15 classes that year), seven San Francisco drivers went home as trophy winners, with three champions. Cal Club had one fifth-place trophy. Two years later in the first nationals in Salina, KS, San Francisco had a dozen trophy winners and again three champions. Cal Club, zero. By 1983 there were 38 trophy winners from San Francisco on the lot, and 15 champions. Cal Club, again, zero.
As a result, the record for the most championships in one year by a single Region stands at 16, San Francisco in 1984. And second-most, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. But Cal Club was catching on and catching up. By the late ’80s, the southern contingent began sending greater numbers to the Solo Nats and results followed.
The Most Championships by a Region record has separate lists for San Francisco and Cal Club because both outstrip everyone else. Of San Francisco’s best 12 (top 10 with ties), 10 are from the 1980s and ’90s. All of Cal Club’s top 10 are from this century.
Third-best Region? Five different Regions which have welcomed as many as seven champions home – New England in 1985, Northwest in 2002, San Diego in 2010, New England again in 2015 and Milwaukee in 2018.
Triple Digit Winners
Over the half-century of the Solo Nationals, just five Regions have triple digits in the championship count. San Francisco leads at 348 (including 10 non-championship or supplemental class victories), Cal Club is next at 190 (4), then New England at 163 (5), Northwest at 144 (2), and Texas at 100 (23). The Texas tally is boosted by several in the supplemental Formula SAE class from the powerhouse Texas-Arlington team.
At the other end of the spectrum are 10 Regions which have had just one champion in the 51 years. The most recent addition to that list is Arctic Alaska Region, for which Anthony Porta won the B Modified title this year.
Winning Streaks
There are categories for winning streaks. Nicole Wong of Cal Club Region burst into the top spot this year with her 13th victory, unbeaten since 2011. Last year, Wong had tied Karen Babb, who’d won 12 from 1994 to 2005.
Twelve is also the top number on the men’s side, held by Jeff Kiesel, 2006-’17. Kiesel is now working on a new streak since 2019 (five wins, 2020’s cancelled event doesn’t count). Larry MacLeod, Saginaw Valley, is up to six and counting, dating back to 2018.
Top Trophy Finishers
When it comes to trophy finishes, Mark Daddio of New England Region stands atop the mountain. Daddio has competed in 32 Nationals and has trophied every time, including a win in D Street this year. That’s not only the longest consecutive trophy streak by any driver, but also the most by a driver who has never failed to take home a trophy.
Annie Gill of Northwest Region extended her trophy streak record this year with her 20th trophy finish, second in SSCL. Nicole Wong moved into a tie on the women’s Always Trophied list with her 15th trophy finish, winning SSPL. She’s now tied with Lisa Krueger-Burgess, who trophied in all 15 of her Nationals between 1997 and 2014.
Longest Between…
Every now and then, a driver who last competed at Nationals back in the previous millennium decides to try it again. This year it was Boyd Butler from Utah Region, who last competed in 1983 with a BSP ’68 Shelby GT350 (he still has it). “Unfortunately, out in Utah, I’d never heard of or got the intel that everyone was running on Hoosier street TDs,” Butler said. “I came with Goodyear Wingfoot radials.”
It was also the first time he’d seen C Prepared cars. Finally in 2019 he returned, but just as a spectator, and learned Robert Lewis’s ’65 Mustang was for sale. He snapped it up. This year he came back as a competitor, 41 years later. No one has a longer gap.
Butler wasn’t the only one this year. It’s rare that even one driver shows up after such a long absence. This year there were three who made the top 10 list. Frank Schwartz, Detroit Region, last appeared in 1990, 34 years ago; and Gary Bennett Sr., South Carolina, came again after last running in 1992, 32 years ago.
