I recall that one year we drove down for EVERY race at Road Atlanta, even though it is a long way out of our division, cost us a ton of vacation days, $$, and sleep (on the weekends we couldn't use vacation). And then they changed the Pro-IT rules to give points to each starter in each Pro-IT race, and made it harder for out-of-division people to win the championship (believe me, it wasn't intentional, just a nice surprise at the end of the year).

But it paid off.

Comparing the ARRC to any divisional championship is kind of like the argument I had a couple of weeks ago at the Golden Retriever National Specialty show with someone from the northeast. She kept insisting that it must be harder to finish championships on dogs in the NE because there were so many more dogs entered at every show. The problem is that she doesn't think about the fact that there still may be a percentage of dogs that are deserving of the win, and there will always be a larger percentage that are there just because they can be.

There is no doubt that the ARRC is tough to win, and doesn't depend just on talent. Lady luck is alive and well at RA, and plays favorites. A small piece of debris in a tire will take you out just as easily as mechanical failure or crash.