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TOPEKA, Kansas (Dec. 16, 2016) -- The Sports Car Club of America is now accepting nominations for the Wendi Allen Scholarship, a fund developed to give deserving female Soloists financial assistance to further their driving ambitions. Nominations should be submitted by February 1, 2017, to Howard Duncan at hduncan@scca.com.
Two deserving female Solo drivers will be selected by a committee of influential female Solo champions. Winners of the award are based on two basic criteria. First, the selected drivers will have displayed a certain level of success and skill behind the wheel. Both winners will also be very involved individuals in the Solo Community.
The winners of this award will be eligible to receive $1,500 to support travel to National Solo events and the Tire Rack Solo National Championship. In addition, SCCA will waive entry fees for the scholarship recipients to all National Solo events throughout the year. The Club will also work with the Solo community and its commercial partners to seek other forms of support for the winners, including driver training, mentoring, product and logistical assistance.
And as the call for nominations goes out, perhaps it’s appropriate to catch up with one of last year’s recipients, Cindy Duncan. Wife, mother, tech support specialist and altruist, Duncan devotes most of her days to helping and supporting others. Never content to just sit idly by when there are problems in need of solutions, Duncan goes out of her way to help others. Yet beneath her modest and kind exterior lies a secret – Duncan is a fighter. She has battled a spectrum of health issues since her teenage years and even fought off cancer. But when behind the wheel, she is a determined and formidable autocross competitor.
Regularly gracing the top of the PAX index at her local Central Kentucky Region and Kentucky Region autocross events, Cindy knows how to wheel a car around cones. She began racing locally in a 1998 Ford Contour SVT in 2000. The Contour was hit from behind on the highway one day in 2001, which nearly totaled the car. In an ironic twist of events, this car accident actually saved Duncan’s life.
An MRI taken following the accident revealed cancer. Unwilling to succumb to this setback, she battled cancer and fought her way onto the national autocross scene, campaigning a 2003 Mazdaspeed Protégé which took her to Heartland Park Topeka to compete in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships that garnered a string of second- and third-place finishes. She nearly won in 2006, falling just 0.072 seconds shy of the DSL National Championship.
Though she desperately wanted to win that elusive national championship that had slipped so narrowly through her fingers, autocross took a backseat to motherhood for the next several years. A son was born in 2009, and a daughter followed in 2012. Any one of the life-changing events she faced would have dissuaded the average autocrosser from seriously pursuing the sport. Duncan, however, is not an average autocrosser.
Unable to stay away, Duncan still made an occasional appearance at local events in her daily driver, often with a child’s car seat still strapped in the back. She often surprised new competitors who didn’t know her and weren’t expecting to be bested by a mild-mannered female in her modest daily driver. Never the type to gloat, Duncan would always take it upon herself to offer advice and encouragement to her fellow competitors, both at events where she was competing and at driving schools as an instructor.
In 2012, Cindy returned to the national autocross scene, finishing third in DSPL in a borrowed Nissan 200 SX. Hoping to claim that DSL national championship that had gotten away, in 2013 she purchased a 6-cylinder (305 hp) Ford Mustang, expecting that the car would be classed in DS like previous 6-cylinder pony cars. Alas, when the Stock Classes morphed to Street Classes on true DOT street tires, her Mustang was classified in F Street with the 8-cylinder versions. Undaunted by her self-proclaimed “under-hood gap†and spotting her competition 120 horsepower to go with the 2-cylinder deficiency, Duncan again fell just shy of the national championship she desired, finishing second in FSL in 2014. In 2015, Cindy continued to campaign her underdog V6 Mustang, all the while debating whether or not to make another run at a Tire Rack Solo National Championship. Instead, at the last minute, she opted to co-drive with friend Carol Kolk in her ESPL 2007 Ford Mustang GT, finishing a very respectable third at the marquee event in a car she’d driven for the first time just two days earlier.
In 2016, Cindy finally got the big break she needed. Her talent and devotion to autocross received their due recognition when a friend in her region nominated Duncan for the Wendi Allen Scholarship. The scholarship was established by the family of the late Wendi Allen to honor her passion for the autocross community and desire to help women succeed and become leaders in the sport of Solo. When the Wendi Allen Scholarship committee learned of Duncan’s drive, talent and spirit of helping others, despite her own personal setbacks, she was a natural choice for the award.
Determined to capitalize on this opportunity, Duncan armed herself with a new weapon, a 2016 Ford Mustang 5.0 Liter V8 which she outfitted for F Street. Working around a demanding schedule which often required weekend hours, and with her supportive husband, James, to care for the children while she was competing, Duncan was able to attend eight regular season national events, sampling the full spectrum of Tire Rack ProSolo, Tire Rack Match Tour, Tire Rack Championship Tour, and CAM Challenge events.
With her long-desired national championship seemingly finally within reach, Duncan faced one additional setback. During the Tire Rack ProSolo Finale in Lincoln, a prior back injury reared its head. Barely able to stand or even sit, Duncan skipped one of the sessions to visit an Urgent Treatment Center. But the solo community stepped in to help this member who had devoted so much of herself to bettering the sport. Friends from around the country completed her work assignments, changed her tires, and prepared her car for competition so that she wouldn’t risk aggravating her injury.
Even with a suspect back, Duncan held the lead in FSL going into the final day of competition. Fate, however, was not done with its attempt to foil her bid for the championship title. Just before the fifth heat on Friday of the Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships, historic rains drenched the venue and caused an unprecedented two-hour delay in the action. The 66 drivers in her heat had to wait for the downpour to stop before taking to the West Course. Splashing and sliding through the standing water in her 435 horsepower Mustang, Duncan put down her fastest time on her first run.
Unable to improve on her subsequent runs, she watched as other drivers whittled away at her 0.471 second first day advantage as water slowly started to drain from the course. But with a rainbow emblazoning the sky at the conclusion of the heat, Duncan’s time held up, resulting in a 0.379 second victory and her first national championship along with a fairy tale ending for the Wendi Allen Scholarship recipient.
Story by Laura Harbour
Picture: Cindy Duncan splashing her way to a Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championship
Photo Credit: Rupert Berrington
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