SCCA, NASA, PCA and the rest: US club road racing explained

Almost every road racing driver in the United States competes in club racing, and almost no coverage exists of it. The professional championships get the attention while the organisations that run several thousand races a year get very little.

This index holds more club racing than anything else. NASA alone is 11,653 races. Here is how the organisations differ and what the results show about them.

The organisations

SCCA is the largest and the most structured. It runs a three-tier system that most other clubs do not have.

NASA is the other national body. Broader class structure, more series-within-the-series, and a strong presence in endurance and time trial alongside wheel-to-wheel racing.

PCA Club Racing is the Porsche Club of America's racing arm, single-marque, and much larger than most people outside it realise.

BMW CCA Club Racing is the equivalent for BMW.

Then there is a separate world of budget endurance racing, ChampCar, World Racing League and American Endurance Racing, where teams share cheap cars over long races.

The SCCA ladder, which is the part people ask about

SCCA road racing has three levels and they are frequently confused.

Regionals are the entry point. Run by local SCCA regions, open to anyone with the appropriate licence, and where the overwhelming majority of SCCA racing happens.

Majors is the national tier, formally the Hoosier Super Tour. Bigger fields, drivers travelling further, and results that count toward national standings.

The Runoffs is the national championship meeting. One event a year, invitation by qualification through the season, and the only place an SCCA national champion is crowned.

The strength difference is measurable. Taking the median rating of drivers who competed in each since 2024:

That ordering is exactly what the structure intends. Each tier is harder than the one below, and the gap from Regional to Majors is larger than the gap from Majors to the Runoffs.

Where the strongest amateur fields are

Median field strength across the club organisations, drivers who raced from 2024 onward:

Two things stand out.

The budget endurance series rate higher than most sprint club racing. That is not because the cars are quick. Long races bring in professionals and semi-professionals as hired guns alongside the amateurs paying for the seat, and racing those people is worth more than racing a Regional field.

Single-marque club racing sits mid-table. PCA at 1,386 and BMW CCA at 1,625 are both above SCCA Regionals, which reflects a smaller, more committed and more experienced entry.

Our World Racing League and ChampCar figures come from small samples. Treat those two rows as indicative.

What none of this tells you

Field strength is not difficulty of entry, and it is not cost. A Regional weekend is the cheapest way into wheel-to-wheel racing in America and a budget endurance seat can cost less than a single sprint weekend, and neither of those facts appears anywhere in the numbers above.

We also hold no licensing information, no entry fees and no car costs. If you are trying to work out how to start, the organisations themselves are the source, not this index.

Coverage is uneven between organisations. NASA goes back to 2003 and SCCA Regionals only to 2022, so the race counts above measure what we hold. They are not a count of what each club has run.

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Field strength is the median Racer Rating of drivers who competed in each series from 2024 onward. Full series list on the series index.