1158 TIMES 1; Solo is the loneliest number.(Competition)

Byline: STEVEN COLE SMITH

It is "the biggest motorsports competition in the world,'' says the Sports Car Club of America.

And with 1158 racers participating in the four-day event, no one is arguing.

But with free admission and only 168 bleacher seats available but seldom filled, no one is arguing that the 35th Annual Tire Race SCCA Solo National Championships is truly a spectator event.

That's fine. Autocross can be a lonely sport.

The SCCA Solo Nationals began in 1973. Solo, SCCA's version of autocross, is a competition of drivers racing against the clock on a course laid out with hundreds of orange pylons. There are two courses-in this case, East and West, and they change each year-and a driver's best aggregate time from both courses determines the winner. A driver who moves or knocks over a pylon receives a two-second penalty on the time for that run. Precision rules.

The two courses "are completely different from each other,'' says Per Schroeder, technical editor for Grassroots Motorsports magazine, who, along with his wife, Kim, is racing his 2007 Mini Cooper S in the GS class. The East course "sort of resembles an old, traditional airport course,'' Schroeder says, with several full-throttle sections. The West course is tighter and favors torquey cars that can punch out of a slow corner. On both courses, a run in the 50-second range seems about average for many street cars.