Driving Sports

The SCCA National Championship Runoffs happen each year in September. For one week, amateur racers from all over the United States (and some from other places) converge on one place to race for a national championship.

SCCA national championship racing is divided into 24 classes. There are qualifying races throughout the year at most race tracks in America, and SCCA awards divisional championships to the drivers who do well in these events, but the national championship in each class is decided at the Runoffs. It doesn’t matter if you won every national points race in the country before Labor Day – everything comes down to this one race.

In 2009, for the first time ever, the SCCA Runoffs were held at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Eddie Nakato, owner of AR Auto Service in Lake Oswego, Oregon was there to compete for a championship, but his Runoffs story started long before the welcome party and the first green flag.

In fact, the story starts almost two years ago, when Eddie first decided to take a run at a championship. The young mechanic and driver purchased an older Acura Integra and burned up the tracks of the Pacific Northwest with it. At the time, the Runoffs were held at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas, and Eddie threw his tools and his racing tires into the back of the car and drove the Acura from his home in Oregon all the way to Kansas.

It wasn’t long before Eddie realized he’d brought a knife to a gunfight. The Acura was 10 years old and shy about 30 horsepower against the competition. But the factory-backed Honda team took Eddie under their wing and gave him sportsmanlike assistance. When the green flag flew, Eddie had qualified in 18th position – next to last. But throughout the race, Eddie clicked off reliable laps and passed each competitor in front of him until the checkered flag brought an end to the race with Eddie sitting comfortably in 11th place.

With a respectable showing under his belt, Eddie decided to get serious for the 2009 season. “I used to race all different kinds of cars, whatever I could get my hands on,” Eddie says, “but when I decided to make another charge at the Championship, I knew I had to get serious about this one race.” Eddie bought the car that the race leaders drove – a 2007 Honda Civic Si – and prepared it for the racing season.

“The one thing I did that I’m really glad about is I flew to Wisconsin for an ordinary open track day, and I drove the track with a rented Hyundai Elantra. That was so I didn’t show up for the race with no mental picture of the track to go by. It’s better if you’re not a complete novice when you want to win all the chips,” Eddie says.

Eddie finished 2^nd in the divisional championship in the regular season, and when the time came to head for Wisconsin, he loaded the car and his gear into a truck and trailer this time and set out for the long drive eastward.

“It’s great to get out and see some of the countryside. We took Interstate 90 eastbound, and toured through Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota on the way to the races,” Eddie says.

It takes three days of hard driving to get from Portland to Elkhart Lake, but along the way Eddie (together with his friend Jeff Zurschmeide) passed through the Little Big Horn battlefield, the famous Sturgis, South Dakota, and of course, the notorious Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota.

“It was a thick slice of America. No doubt about that,” Eddie remarks.

Arriving at Road America, the scale of the Runoffs is nothing short of amazing. Over 700 cars attend in a typical year, and thousands of racers and crew cover the grounds. The track at Road America is over 4 miles long, with long straights both uphill and down, and tight, unforgiving technical sections. It’s a club racer’s dream come true.

“My first qualifying session was OK. I was 7 seconds a lap slower than the leader, but I knew there was time to find, and I was prepared to spend my week learning,” Eddie says.

Eddie shaved almost a second a lap off his time in the second qualifying session, which is impressive because the track was wet with rain and the leader was actually slower by 2 seconds. But Eddie still had to find another 6 seconds on track to catch up to the leader’s best dry time.

In the third and final qualifying session, Eddie benefited from advice offered by his old friends on the Honda team. The Honda boys took Eddie to the BF Goodrich tire dealer and asked if BF Goodrich would sponsor Eddie to the tune of a set of new tires for the race. The dealer agreed and suddenly there was a new set of shoes on the Civic from Oregon.

Eddie drove another two seconds a lap faster in the final qualifying session, and the leader still couldn’t match his best time from the first session. That put Eddie within three seconds a lap of the leaders, but in the hard-fought world of Showroom Stock racing, Eddie was still 13th out of 21 drivers on the grid for the race.

With 24 classes in competition, drivers get about one on-track session each day, and often have to wait a day or two between their final qualifying session and their race day. Eddie used his down time to rest, think about the upcoming race, plot strategy with Jeff and his friends from Honda, and watch a little bit of the show.

Saturday morning dawned overcast, but dry – that’s perfect racing weather. The heavy, cool and humid air makes more horsepower in a race car’s engine, but the track is dry for excellent traction. As the race started, Eddie was reminded that while it’s all smiles and good times in the pits, on track it’s a different story. Another driver took Eddie’s left-hand mirror clean off the car going by him in a mad dash to the green flag, and the gauntlet was thrown down.

Tune in tomorrow to find out how Eddie's race turned out.