(Photos and words by Lance Hamilton)

[Nutting: By now most Bangshift readers should be familiar with my daily driver 1987 Monte Carlo LS that I autocross on a regular basis in the Classic American Muscle class of my local SCCA region. While I’m busy getting trounced by the kiddie go-kart class, Lance Hamilton and his home-built ‘85 Monte Carlo SS, “Barney”, are out there showing what can be done with perseverance, hard work, and 383 cubic inches of V8 pounding the pavement through a T56 and Ford 9”. Whether it’s taking on the local CAM competition in his region or hitting the road course at an Optima event, Lance proves that an Ordinary Joe can hang with the big boys at National-caliber Pro Touring events without taking a second mortgage on his house. Totally Bangshift approved. Below is his write-up of what it was like to participate in the inaugural running of the Classic American Muscle Invitational Challenge in Lincoln Nebraska on August 30th and 31st.]

An Invitation to the SCCA Pro Solo Finale

Last July as I rolled into the paddock at our local Kansas City Region\KS Region joint autocross event at Heartland Park Topeka, Linda Duncan came up to my car door and said “Great car…you are running in CAM right?”

We talked a bit about my car, the new class for the SCCA this year Classic American Muscle, and the SCCA in general and how the SCCA is trying to bring some of the Trans AM, muscle car type cars back into SCCA Solo racing. She mentioned to me that something was in the works about an Invitation Only event at Nationals geared toward CAM cars and that I needed to run well to make a good showing if I wanted to get an invitation. While I didn’t really run that well at that event, the seed had been planted and I wanted to get that invitation to Nationals.

When the press release came out about the Speedway Motors Classic American Muscle Invitational Challenge being held August 30th and 31st I immediately contacted the organizer of the event Raleigh Boreen via email making my case for why I should be invited. I wanted in this thing in a bad way and I didn’t even know really what a Pro Solo was at this time.

A Pro Solo is like a combination of bracket drag racing and autocross. Two identical courses are set up side by side, one goes left, the other goes right, and there is a Christmas tree light to start the race.

The SCCA Pro Solo Finale takes place over the two day weekend before the Solo Nationals week in Lincoln, NE. Around 260 drivers total among all of the classes were entered and they ran three practice sessions: Sat morning, Sat afternoon and Sunday morning.

They group up in 8 car groups by class, 4 on one side and 4 on the other and make 2 runs each on each course, (Left, right, left, right, and done).

You don’t even get out of your cars and hopefully you’ve got a helper there to work the tire pressures between runs.

Once all of the practice runs are finished, the winners are calculated by the best combined time of the left and right course. Each class winner then advances to the Super Challenge Round.

During the Super Challenge round, you are started by the tree based on your index, you make one run on one of the courses against a competitor on the other course, then you switch courses and line right back up and make another run on the other course. The best combined time advances, loser goes home.

The SCCA invited 24 drivers to the Speedway Motors Classic American Muscle Invitational Challenge. The format was to run 4 practice runs each at 7:30 am Sunday morning to set our class index times, then at the lunch break before the Super Challenge we’d have our own little Challenge round. The pairings were set by blind draw and the indexes were the top times of each class…so for instance the fastest CAM-C time was the index time for all of the CAM-C cars.

There were 3 classes, CAM-T (Traditional), CAM-C (Contemporary), and CAM-S (Sport). CAM-T cars were the Gen 1-3 Mustang, Gen 1 & 2 Camaro/Firebird, Gen 1-3 Barracuda/Challenger, plus similar generation coupes/sedans going back to 1959. CAM-C cars were the coupe/sedans and pony cars newer than CAM – T, plus C4 Corvettes (C5-7 Corvettes not eligible) and CAM-S C1-3 Corvettes, Cobras, 2 seater AMX’s, Hot Rods.

During the morning runs I struggled just a bit, my car just got looser and looser as the tires heated up. I’d never raced on concrete before and I made the other cardinal sin of making changes to my car right before Nationals. I’d installed a Ridetech MuscleBar front sway bar on my car and changed the rear springs to match right before heading to Lincoln. It got so bad that I spun on my 4th run (2nd on the East course). The heating of the tires before the start probably didn’t help either but how can you NOT do a burnout before lining up at the start tree…

CLICK PLAY TO WATCH THE VIDEO OF LANCE’S FOURTH RUN

We then had a drivers meeting where the blind draw to find the pairings took place. I drew Robbie Unser in the Speedway Motors prepared Nova as my first match race… SWEET… I started praying for rain.

My prayers were answered as rain fell pretty hard during the mid-morning and when we started to line up for our challenge the start and the first third of each course was still very wet…while it looked like the rest of the course was starting to dry out. There was no way to know for sure…as there wasn’t time to walk the course before starting.

Robbie and I were lined up in the 4th pairing, me on the right course him on the left. I got through the start and the first couple of elements pretty well, basically tip toeing as they were pretty wet. As I got to the back part of the course I turned onto the slalom through a puddle of water and then I saw dry concrete and put the hammer down. Unfortunately my tires were still wet and I spun out…just like that I knew I was done…20 seconds into my first run.

I stayed on course and finished 5 seconds behind Robbie and lined up at the start on the let course. A friend stuck his head in my window and said “It’s not undo-able right, just think it through and drive it hard”. I lined up and knew I had to have a perfect run on this side…and then I promptly red lighted the start capping off an epic fail at the event for me. I had been cutting pretty good lights up to that point and was just anxious to get going, nothing any bracket racer hasn’t done before.

CLICK PLAY TO WATCH THE VIDEO OF LANCE’S LAST TWO RUNS

I then settled in to watch the rest of the challenge runs…along with just about everyone else on site. There were golf carts and people standing all along the back areas of the courses, everyone came up to watch the big loud muscle cars competing in the challenge on the Pro-Solo course. The mix of cars at the Invitational was pretty diverse. There were a couple of really nice first gen Camaros, a Buick Skylark, a 1970 Dodge Challenger, a Bandit TA, a 1 owner 1965 AC Cobra, a highly modified 1964 Corvette, couple of 5th gen Camaros and a Monte Carlo SS all competing for some KILLER solid billet cone trophies that Speedway Motors presented to the top 6 finishers.

Several good drivers in good cars had troubles early and were eliminated. Mike Dusold in his twin turbo LS powered 1968 Camaro went out in round 1 because of a DNF and Karen Leisinger spun her well prepped 1970 Camaro on her first run much like I did. Jinx Jordan and Al Schoonmaker were co-driving Al’s beautiful 1969 LS powered Camaro and ended up fighting for the third place finish with Jinx just topping Al in the end. Josh Leisinger in his fully prepped 1964 Corvette ended up beating Dave Feigner in his 1995 Mustang for the top spot and capped it off with a sliding burnout after crossing the finish lights for the last time.

CLICK BELOW TO WATCH THE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND OF THE EVENT

There was then an award ceremony right there in paddock and some picture taking to wrap up the event.

From all accounts it was a success, everyone seemed to love watching the big loud cars run at the SCCA Nationals and there is talk of continuing to entice older muscle cars to come out and run with the SCCA in more events going forward. I know I’ll be there…with a better showing the next time around.

CLICK BELOW FOR ONE FINAL VIDEO OF LANCE’S PRO-TOURING G-BODY IN ACTION