For many years, the SCCA National Club Racing program has had an award known as “The Triple Crown”. Basically, if you win your divisional points series, and win your class at the annual race at Road America known as “The June Sprints”, and win your class at the National Championship race (“The Runoffs”), then you win the Triple Crown. It’s obviously quite difficult to win one, considerably harder than even winning a National Championship.
I found this description of the Triple Crown on the Chicago Region website:
The SCCA Triple Crown was a coveted accomplishment long before it became a formal award. To earn this award, a competitor must win his/her class in each of the following challenges: The June Sprints; their home division’s national points championship; and, The SCCA National Championship at the Valvoline Run-Offs.
Chicago Region, SCCA, developed the SCCA Triple Crown as a formal concept and award. Its development was inspired by Speedvision driver interviews from the Run-Offs several years ago. Drivers consistently commented that if they could win only two races in their amateur racing career, the races would be The June Sprints and the Run-Offs. That got us thinking not only about these two events, but also about the state and health of club racing in general. We wanted to tie the Sprints and Run-Offs together somehow, but that addressed only two events in club racing, it didn’t tell the entire club racing picture: the continued support of national race events in each of the divisions. So we looked at parallels in other competitive venues and the natural one was the Triple Crown in Horse Racing. We ran some statistics from the past few years to determine how many drivers would have won the Triple Crown had it been a formal program. The answer came back as very few. This told us that winning all three titles in one race season is difficult, something to strive for, and a title worthy of the successes of the competitors.
Since the mid-’80s, the IT classes have been nationally-governed, but don’t have national status. That is, even though the rules are common across the whole country, they aren’t eligible to race at National races, which means that there are no IT races contested at either the June Sprints or at the Runoffs, nor can one score points towards a Divisional championship. The biggest award one can hope to win in IT is one’s own regional/divisional series.
That is, until 2008. Starting in 2008, a new program called the “IT Triple Crown“, or ITTC, is available. Unlike the national triple crown, in the ITTC, a driver will score points in his local series based on end-of-season finishing position, and also score points in 3 big races held across the country, again, based on the finishing position in those races. So while it will be difficult to win it, each year, someone will win it in each of the 5 IT classes. It is my understanding that there will be trophies in 2008, and hopefully eventually prize money and/or contingency awards available as well.
The races that will count towards the ITTC are the IT/SPEC*tacular (sometimes called the IT Fest), held in August at Mid-Ohio, the American Road Race of Champions (ARRC), held in November at Road Atlanta, and a brand new race, the IT Fest West (not sure if this is the official name), which will debut at the end of July at Thunderhill Raceway here in northern California. So that IT drivers don’t need to travel to all three of these races, each driver can take points from his best 3 of the 4 qualifying “legs”.
For me, sitting here in the San Francisco Region, I will count (1) my finishing position in the San Francisco Region’s regional points series, (2) my finishing position at the IT Fest West, and (3) my finishing position in either of the other two big races. I’ve raced at Mid-Ohio but never been to Road Atlanta, and both are about 2500 miles each way from home. I won’t do this trip in 2008, but maybe in 2009 …
Anyway, I’m thrilled that there is a way to win something really prestigious in the IT classes. Eventually I can see this drawing more competitors into IT, some who avoid it right now because there is no national award on the line. I can’t wait to win one for ITR!
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