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SCCA 2022 Solo Driver of the Year Mark Daddio

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Please accept my nomination for Mark Daddio to be considered for 2022 Solo Driver of the Year.-Brain Conners

In searching the Solo Rule book you find Mark’s name 28 times.  It started in 1988 with Rookie of the Year.  Yet, never for Driver of the Year.  There are so many class wins, it’s understandable how he is so often associated with the term “Alien” or “Original Alien” driver.  Getting to know Mark over the past 10 years confirms his Alien status.  He does not approach driving in a manner mere mortals would understand. It would take a book to explain.  He doesn’t use video.  He doesn’t use data.  He’s just “plugged in” without any aids.

The last National Championship for Mark was in AS in his salvage titled Corvette in 2016.

  • 2nd in 2017
  • 8th in 2018
  • 2nd in 2019
  • 4th in 2021

Mark was starting to think age was a contributing factor and he just might be slowing down.  Could he still win a highly contested class?  When 2022 rolled around the new BRZ caught his attention.  When he got the car he couldn’t have known this was going to be the largest class at Nationals.  The year started off…… Ugly.  The car wouldn’t turn.   It rebelled against the Daddio approach.  This led to untold hours of measuring and searching for why this car could not be tamed.  Ultimately, he figured out the suspension geometry.  Then he found MCS had square cut the camber adjusting hole and Subaru had a slight chamfer on that same hole.  That was a difference of 2/10th of a degree of front camber in a car that desperately needed as much as it could get.  Being the sportsman Mark has always been he shared that information with his competitors.   Now the car had a setup he liked.  He had to find the tire or combination of tires that worked.  That led to testing, and more testing.  I carried eight tires, Bob Davis carried tires and Mark brought tires to Nationals.  He worked every combination until he found the optimal solution.  He knew the competition had more horsepower.  He also knew he does better on courses that are left biased vs right.  And this year, both courses were left biased.  (yeah he thinks about that stuff)

That’s how Mark Daddio’s 2022 Nationals went.  An outstanding performance against tough competition in a new car against his own “boogie man” of whether or not age was contributing to his ability to win it all.

The Solo Driver of the Year will have demonstrated exceptional skill or overcome major obstacles to produce an outstanding performance at the prior year’s Tire Rack SCCA Solo National Championships. The winner is selected by the Solo Events Board from nominations submitted by the membership at large.

This year’s Solo Driver of the Year is New England Region’s Mark Daddio. Daddio is a Silver Circle member, previous Driver of Eminence, and (counting the D Street title he earned at the 2022 Solo National Championships) has 13 National Championship titles to his name. In 2022, he also continued his streak of earning a trophy at all 30 Solo Nationals he’s attended.