www.AtlantaSCCA.org

by David Wallens,  Grassroots Motorsports

"Was the first 'American Road Race of Champions' a success?", the January, 1965, issue of Sports Car Graphic asked? Their answer was a resounding yes, as 190 drivers from across the country converged upon Riverside Raceway to vie for national titles in all of the Sports Car Club of America's Club Racing classes.

The SCCA had some different classes back the, but the basic gist of the event was similar. The original plan involved inviting the top drivers from each Division to a single location to decide who was the best, with a tow fund established to ease the pain of the long haul. The race would switch between alternate venues each year - Riverside, CA and Daytona Beach, FL.

Drivers competed in 17 classes that first year. The Production classes received a lot of the entries, with popular small-bore Sprites, Midgets and Spitfires filling up the GP and HP ranks. Michigan's Richard Hall won FP with his Volvo P1800, and Porsche started to show some muscle in EP. There were also big-bore Production classes back then - Cobras and Corvettes with big-block engines in A Production and their small-block brothers and sisters in B Production. And C and D Production were in full swing back then too, with Europe's best vying for top bragging rights here in the States.

There were Modified classes for open-cockpit specials, and Sports Car Graphic's Jerry Titus took the D Mod title in his Webster Two-Liter. Open-wheel cars battled in the Formula classes with Formula Vee already well subscribed; plus there were Formula Junior and Formula Libra for the FIA-spec cars.

By 1966 - the race's second visit to Riverside - the number of classes had climbed to 22; 333 entrants traveled to Southern California. The introduction of Sedan classes to the SCCA program helped bolster the ranks, and the Mini Cooper S became the car to have in C Sedan. The national-caliber racing continued and a few drivers started to make names for themselves. Titus earned his third title, running a Porsche to a DP win, and Hull again won FP. The Porsches dominated EP but fell short at the end. They took eight of the top nine finishing positions, although Carl Swanson's Morgan took the all-important checker.

The number of entries kept rising through the final years of the 1960's and 404 cars passed through the tech shed in 1969 (though only 345 made it to the starting grid. Skip Barber won Formula Ford that year, even though he started from the back of the pack after switching chassis following a crash in qualifying. Peter Gregg scored an early, big win that year with a BP title with a Porsche 911, and Paul Spruell, took the GP crown with an Alfa Romeo Guilietta Spider.

As the race moved into the 1970's, the ARRC relocated to a new home at Road Atlanta in Georgia, where the event would soon be rebadged the Champion Spark Plug Challenge and then the Valvoline Runoffs - but that's a different story. The competition continued to develop even further, as some regular Joes started showing up with their own factory-type outfits - big rigs, uniformed crew, big checkbooks, etc.

After laying dormant for 20+ years, the American Road Race of Champions moniker was revived by Road Atlanta and the Atlanta Region SCCA in 1994. This time around, the race would feature the regional-only classes not invited to the National Runoffs: Improved Touring, Club Ford, Club Sports 2000, A Sedan and Formula Mazda (before both of the latter became National classes).

With a permanent home at Road Atlanta, the race has garnered a strong following. The event has attracted faces from the original ARRC races and amateur drivers moving up to the professional level of motorsports. Atlanta native Pete Harrison, who won the B Sports Racing title in 1972 with a Lola 290, came back in 1994 in a CS2 car taking a number of championships in the ensuing years. Tom Fowler, Sr., who attended the first two ARRC races in a Sprite, also returned for a few years competing in the Enduro race in an ITC Rabbit. Some familiar names now recognized in the Speed World Challenge Touring classes and National classes made their early mark at the ARRC as well. Drivers like P.D. Cunningham, Pierre Kleinubing, Sylvain Tremblay, Johnny Miller, Randy Pobst, Terry Boecheller, Eric Curran, Andy Brumbaugh and others have graced the podium over the years and used the ARRC as a measure of success before moving on.

With more seasoned veterans returning to regional racing as a way to enjoy a more favorable fun-to-dollar ratio in their racing budget, expect to see more familiar faces at future ARRC events.