Registration for the 2018 Tire Rack SCCA Solo Nationals opened this past Monday. The SCCA announced a maximum entry cap of 1350, and as of this morning 1220 of those slots have been filled. Will we see you on the concrete beach of Lincoln Airpark in Lincoln, Nebraska, on September 3-7?
As of 10:27 p.m. Eastern, they're up to 1318 entries.
And I'm the latest one to sign up. 
Five spots left, I'm told....
Four....
Two....
And I'm now told just one spot left.
And they're full. Dang. Well, see everyone in Lincoln. This will be fun.
Makes one wonder how big the event could be......
WARNING!!!!! SHAMELESS PLUG
THE MISSISSIPPI REGION SCCA IS HOLDING A TWO DAY EVENT AT GRENADA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT GRENADA, MS JULY 14 & 15.
On Saturday at conclusion of AX there will be open Test n Tune for several hours. The site is virtually identical to concrete in Lincoln. Great event for warmup to Nationals.
More info...msscca.org
In reply to glueguy :
It seems like at some point soon they would start trying to find ways to make it larger. They've hit their cap, what, two years on a row now?
Well **** me, 
I don't look at the mail for a day and miss it?? Last year it took a month plus to fill up IIRC, now it's 4.something days. Guess the economy's better!
I'm wait-listed as of early Saturday afternoon, maybe that will be close enough to catch one of the cancellations and get in. Since I already have a room share reserved that would be kinda nice.
Replying to freetors, they have expanded that sucker already. I seem to remember 2009 had a cap of ~1100 though don't quote me. 1350 is a righteous batch of cars to get through and they are relying on a reasonably smooth process, experienced staff /and competitors/, reliable timing, and no major screw-ups to fit through ~340 cars/course/day. Back in the day at San Francisco Region, pre-computerization, we once had the first event of the year (always biggest attendance) with 320+ cars. It took us from around 9 a.m. until just dark, about 6 p.m. and the course had to get picked up by headlights. While the staff and volunteers at National are a cut above what the Regions have, you have to allow for rain and the occasional blip of trouble. Yesterday we had two tow-offs (engine, suspension) at a local event, cost us 10-15 minutes per and that was with no loss of oil or coolant! I'll be really surprised if they can push it past 1400, that is just asking for a domino effect leading to a huge delay or even lost runs. At least they have sunlight until almost 8.
I know they are up against a throughput cap, but my question was really two parts - a what if there were no logistic constraints, how many would register? And the second question is the business side. If you have 1300 paying customers, with another 1300 ready to throw money at you, then you need to figure out how to accommodate. I'm thinking about sprint cars with multiple heat races and winner advancing to the main event. I dunno, just thinking crazy tonight.
I personally am not really affected by this yet, I have visited nationals a couple of times for the spectacle, but I probably won't run for another year or two. Yes, 1350 drivers is really a huge number of people to congregate on one place. I know that the paddock never really fills up and that's a HUGE area. Hotels are usually pretty well booked, but has the whole town ever been totally booked?
One member on RRAX suggested using the practice course as a third competition course. His idea was three courses with six competition days, each driver drives three days. Alternatively, if you don't care about pax or comparing overall times, they could stay with the four day format using all three courses, but you only drive two. Everybody within the same class obviously grouped together on the same courses. Three active courses should theoretically be able to run the entire field through 50% faster.
LCQ.
(That was just put there for JG's benefit.)
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