Tamra Hunt
New England Region
Member since 2015
SCCA Rookie of the Year in 2015

“I didn’t grow up around car racing. In fact, I learned to drive stick on a Ford Festiva. With that car, I had to think ahead if I wanted to make it up a hill without slowing to a crawl! To say the least, my racing career didn’t start until later in life.

In 2014, I signed up for a rookie autocross school. My first year of autocross was spent at my local club running a Miata. Later that year, I took an Evolution Performance Driving School, where Billy Davis was my instructor. Little did I know that less than a year later, Billy would become a great friend and mentor, and that I would have the opportunity to drive the Davis car at National events.

In 2015, I dove head first into National events, driving many different cars – 18 in total! Of those, I drove four different cars at National events across L2, L3, and CSPL, never finishing off the podium. Driving a variety of cars forced me to adapt every time and it was a great learning experience. The end result was placing second overall in L3 in a Honda S2000 named ‘Elsa’ owned by Tim Kong (at that point, a three-week-old STR build), winning CSPL in the Mazda Miata ‘Jack’ owned by the Davis family, and receiving Solo Rookie of the Year honors. In 2016, I managed a repeat CSPL win, but in Mike Kline’s and Danny Kao’s car ‘Oscar,’ having never driven it before (the Davis car had electrical gremlins, causing a last-minute car swap).

The SCCA has an amazing sense of family. During the Wilmington Tire Rack ProSolo event in 2016, issues plagued us. We broke the differential carrier, exhaust, an axle, and even floated a valve. Thanks to our perseverance as well as parts and assistance from the autocross community, we were able to patch it up repeatedly. Despite missing many runs, I still managed a 0.050sec victory in L1, and the car owner Billy won open CSP, too.

Although my SCCA life is just beginning, what an awesome, whirlwind of an experience it has been so far.”