Accounting with Confidence Podcast

51: Behind the Scenes: A Recap of my 2025 Trip to Solo Nats

• Beth Whitworth • Season 2 • Episode 51

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In this episode, I take you on a personal journey to the SCCA Solo Nationals, where I participate in autocross racing alongside my family. I share my experiences, challenges, and the thrill of competing, everything from tire changes to racing in unpredictable weather. I reflect on the highs and lows of the event, the joy of spending quality time with my daughter, and the personal satisfaction of competing against myself. Join me for a behind-the-scenes look at my passion for racing and how it intersects with my life as an accountant, business owner, and coach.

SCCA YouTube Short: https://youtube.com/shorts/9VxEu0gjE7s?feature=shared

SCCA Facebook Reel: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17CKZXy9ME/

SCCA Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DN0v2s6ZkIz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==


 I am Beth Whitworth race car driving quilt making CPA firm owning wife, mom, and boss. I'm here to help you build a business you love by sharing all of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the excellent sides of working in this industry. It's not always easy, but after many years, I can finally say it's worth it.

Let me guide you on your journey to accounting with confidence.

Hi, and welcome to Accounting With Confidence. I'm Beth Whitworth, your host, and today I'm bringing you a behind the scenes look at this other part of my life. So this has been a hobby of ours, ours being my family, my husband and my daughter for years. And this past week I spent at my 26th solo Nationals.

In a row. And so this is SCCA Solo Nationals. It's a type of auto racing called autocross, and I wanted to just share what I do all week. So if you're watching on YouTube, you'll get to see some of the video clips of what our racing looks like and what the venue looks like. And if you're listening in, just listen and know that this is a big part of my life and this is what I make time for, to spend time with my family and my friends.

So listen in and enjoy. Okay, so here I am on. Sunday of my Nationals Week adventure, and I stayed back today at the Airbnb and, um, tried to get some work done and decided, you know what? I need to recap this event. So what I mean by nationals is it's the SECA solo nationals that I've come to for the 27th year in a row and.

My husband's company has solo performance specialties, has a trailer that we sell merchandise out of, and he does tire service with some friends and ours of ours, r and s racing. And we get here on Wednesday and drop the trailer, and then Thursday is set up day and Friday is when they open the gates for all the competitors.

And Friday night, it, you know, we're, we're kind of busy getting people ready to start competing on Saturday. So there's one big event on Saturday, Sunday, and there's also a separate event that's called, um, a shootout. And I've run two other shootouts this year. One in St. Louis and one in Indiana. And so this was the third one.

I just wanted to give everybody kind of a recap of how the day went. Um, we were super busy on Friday getting people's tires changed and selling merchandise, and then on Saturday morning we had a shootout format of four. We got, everybody got four runs on the course and then it was a bracketed challenge.

And so they took the two ladies classes. This one ran in first heat and one class ran in second heat. And based on index, we were, um, put into the shootout. So results from, I guess, the regular runs in the morning. The ones that were deciding the standings, I, it took second in our class. It took me to my fourth run.

I was the last car on course. They had to hold, you know, waiting for me to be ready 'cause I'm co-driving with Sam and it was starting to rain and everybody said, just drive it like it's dry. So I drove it like it was dry and I had the fastest raw time in the class, but because of the indexing, I ended up in second.

So I did make the shootout and it rained during the entire lunch break and into the shootout. And so we were about the fourth group to go out and it was, it was pretty nasty. And I'm not a. I haven't driven in the rain like that in a long time. Definitely when, uh, I was not on rain tires and we weren't allowed to change 'cause they hadn't turned it into a rain event.

And there's some logistics around that. So I went out and I made it. To about the fourth corner. Yeah. And I spun, so it was a one and done type of bracket. And so we all got one more run at the course and that would decide, you know, first through fourth place. And, uh, I ended up, I believe I ended up fourth.

I didn't even look at the results, but our good friend Emily, um, took the ladies challenge and she had the hardest index out of all of us that were in the, the. Uh, challenge in the final shootout. So I'm so happy for her. That was her first Lady's Index Shootout win, and she got a big trophy from Speedway.

Then we went to the Speedway Motorsports Speed Museum, where then we had our dinner, and that is such a great place. If you're ever in Lincoln, Nebraska, you have got to look this place up. It's three stories of just amazing collect. They have an Al Unser, they like hold display, they have stuff from Bonneville Flats, they have an SECA display.

They have a huge pedal car display. I mean, it, it is just amazing. It's hard to explain, but you could spend hours in there and we, we did some, some walking around and it was pretty fun. Um, and then, like I said, today is Sunday. The second part of the pro solo was finishing today. It was a little slow yesterday because of all the rain, and then they were slow to get started this morning.

We didn't participate in the pro solo. You could do one or the other, either the shootout or the pro solo, and we chose the, the shootout. And tomorrow is essentially there's no competition. There's, um, time to be walking the corsets. So I will compete on Tuesday, Wednesday, and I will probably not give an update.

I'll, I'm gonna do a little recording Thursday on what those results are. So Sam and I and one other woman is, are running in the Cam C ladies. Class and we run Tuesday and Wednesday on fifth heat, and Dave is running a KMC with our friend Ron, and they're running first heat. So Tuesday, Wednesday. By the end of Wednesday we will know how we all did.

We're hoping that Sam or I take home a championship this year and that Dave also takes home the championship or at least one of a top five trophy. So. Alright, I'll check back in later this week. Okay. So I thought I'd give a quick update. I missed giving any update yesterday. So Tuesday was yesterday and that was the first day of competition for us, for um, Dave who ran it in first heat.

And Sam and I ran in Fifth Heat. And the recap really is that the weather was. Gorgeous. It was amazing. It was, it could have been warmer, but didn't need to be. So after day one, I believe, um, da Dave was an eight out of a 35 car class, and that was sitting inside the, the trophies, they trophy down to 10, and Sam and I, we went out and ran.

It's a three person class. She and I and one other woman who we've, I've run against before. We've both run against her before and she's just. Super sweet and, um, my goal was to not hit a cone on every run on day one. And so I managed to get through my first run with no cone, and I believe my second run with no cone, but my third run and fastest run, which would've been the fastest time in the class.

Um, by half a second. Had a cone at the, towards the finish, but, uh, I'm okay. We're only, um, Sam and I are only seven thousandths of a second apart in time, and she's ahead of me by seven thousandths. I, um. And then we're together. We're only 0.5 second out of first place, so we run again, um, today, fifth heat.

Uh, and the conditions aren't great today. So it's been raining but not down pouring, and then it stops. And so the drying conditions on the track can so. Being really obnoxious. Um, so we do think we have an advantage. Um, we do have rain tires, we have contingency plans for all of that. And, um, I'm really looking forward to it now.

Dave finished running this morning and he was in those same types of conditions where it was sprinkling and then it, it'd stop and then it would rain a little harder and then it would stop. And so it was, you know, just patches of dry, patches of wet, but no big puddles. And he finished, he finished 10th, which is the last trophy position.

So he got this really cool trophy. The theme this year is like rock and roll. And so there's lots of of rock t-shirts and stuff that people are selling and wearing. And um, there was a drum set on the stage when he was. Getting his trophy where the winner got a set of drumsticks that he could then do a drum solo.

So that was kind of fun. But I'll update probably tomorrow after the results of today. We stick around for another two days. Um, we've got friends that are competing on Thursday and Friday. It's a whole another set of classes. So there's, we run for four days, but half of the people run on Tuesday, Wednesday, and half the people run on Thursday, Friday.

So it's nice to be able to stick around and see our friends run. But um, we're also doing, um, tire service. So that's what we do in between our, um, running and hanging out with friends is we're working and selling and, and. Um, changing tires. So that's just a short recap of what I'm doing this week and wish me luck.

Hopefully I can overcome that cone and maybe, maybe bring home a trophy. Alright, talk to you soon. Okay, here I am with the final installment of what happened at Nationals 2025. So here I am at the Solo SCCA Nationals, um, finished RAC and did not take the win, but I was only six tenths of a second back from the lead after day two.

Um, so I ended up in second place and Sam came in like. Seven thousandths of a second behind me. So we were very evenly matched. Um, I'm hoping next year, uh, I always say that and that's, that's okay. Uh, it was a good run and I did have some, you know, a couple of cones that I hit and so that at. Two seconds to your time.

So, um, but six tenths over two days is a pretty good showing. So we're continuing to stay here for a couple more days, do entire service, and you can see we've got store stuff behind us, um, and we will be selling and then, um, heading home very soon. So it was a very good week. Um, lots of time with friends.

It's still exhausting, but it's also fun. So, uh, I will check in with everybody later and, um, hopefully next year I will be able to say that I've got a national championship. So thanks for paying attention to me this week and learning a little bit of behind the scenes of what I do when I am. Um, being an accountant and a coach and, um, really, and I guess, and a podcaster.

So let's talk to everybody later. Bye-bye. So that was it. That was my 11, 12 days spent in Lincoln, Nebraska. The highs, the lows. For the most part, this was a really good nationals. I said it felt like we were there for a year, even though it was 12 days, because we had pretty much every season as far as weather.

It was 42 degrees one morning, it was 92 degrees one day. It was everything. But again, it was a very enjoyable. Event. And I think that what I take away from that this year is that I got to spend some really good, uh, quality time with my daughter, who I don't get to see as much, even though she has graduated and she lives very close to us.

She's an adult now. And so having that just kind. Unstructured time we were at the event site and you know, staying at the same Airbnb. That was, that was great. And then I also really ended this event knowing that this is something I still love to do. I want to keep racing and keep trying to improve, but even if I don't win the trophy, it is still something that is very, it's just very.

Personal. So you're really racing against yourself and with a lot of things, you know, you're challenging yourself. You're trying to get that mental ability behind it to say, okay, I'm going to work through things that might seem hard. And we do that in everything we do. Business and in life. And so to participate in a sport that really puts you against yourself, you know, you're always trying to beat your next time or to not hit that cone, um, which adds two seconds to the time.

So I, I really think this is something that I still love to do. The community is really top notch. I have some friends that we have made in this community and racing for the last, um, almost 30 years that I wouldn't trade for the world. So hopefully this was a, a glimpse behind what I constantly referring to about going racing.

This is what it is. And so it's just that behind the scenes. Look, I also am, you know, have this recording so that I have it. For a history, a memory, and I really look forward to going again next year and continuing my racing career and spending that time with my family and friends. Okay, everybody. That's all I have for you today.

Hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes look, and I'll be back with some regular business related episodes very soon. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. My hope is that my experiences can help you navigate the realities of owning and operating your business. Please subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform so that you never miss an episode. Feel free to leave me a text.

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