Level 5 Motorsports owner and driver Scott Tucker made history this past weekend when he won his third consecutive title at the SCCA National Championship Runoffs. Only a select few other drivers have ever accomplished the same. In only his third year competing in the race, having as many wins merits an entire page in the history books for Tucker. Here’s the second part of a look back at the rides that made Scott Tucker an historic name at the SCCA Runoffs.

In 2009, Tucker faced an ebb-and-flow race situation, with him in the front, then overtaken by Scott Buttermore from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., then Tucker in front again. In 2010, Tucker redeemed his minimal mistakes from the year before by holding off most of second-place challenger Buttermore’s passing attempts for the duration of the race at Road America. Tucker was the polesitter, which ended up being integral to a good race, as he was able to avoid a major, multiple-car incident on the front straightaway just after the start. Second-place starter John Heinricy, of Holly, Mich., ran into transmission issues immediately following the green flag, and the cars around him had to maneuver around him on cold tires. In the mess, the No. 98 Dodge Viper of Jim Lynch and the No. 99 Chevrolet Corvette of Tom Sloe collided, bringing several other cars into the crash as well. The clean-up took a long time, and SCCA race officials later decided the race would restart with a 15-minute time limit.

Despite the delay, Tucker and his car were in tact. Tucker was driving the Level 5 Motorsports No. 55 Microsoft Office-sponsored Ferrari 430 Challenge, a car that he is comfortable in as a three-time national driving champion. Tucker maintained his first-place start right off the flag, but Buttermore in his Dodge Viper overtook Tucker on lap two. Tucker pulled ahead once again in turn five on the following lap, but Buttermore quickly inched ahead again in turn six. A lap later, Tucker made the same pass again on turn five, and after settling back into first place, he didn’t let the position go.

After the initial alternation between Tucker and Buttermore, Tucker kept the lead, with Buttermore’s reflection in the Ferrari’s rearviews the closest he came again to Tucker, the T1 National Champion from the year before, despite a last-ditch effort to pass Tucker again in the final lap. Tucker’s Hawk Performance T1 National Championship was his second consecutive victory at the Runoffs. He won by more than half a second and averaged approximately 93 mph. He also recorded the fastest lap of the race at 2:20.080, which works out to be nearly 103 mph.

“It was a good day,” Tucker said of the race. “Buttermore and I had some back-and-forth again, but I was able to find a good passing opportunity and close off his other attempts. Road America is a great track, a fast race, and I’m happy to have been a part of it again.”

The T1 race finished at 17 laps and 28 miles. Altogether, the three-day SCCA Runoffs comprised 604 competitors and crowned 27 National Champions. Tucker then entered the final stages of the 2010 driving season before opening the 2011 season, the most successful he and his Level 5 Motorsports team have seen yet.

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If he were playing hockey, it would be a hat trick. In other sports, perhaps a triple double or a grand slam-although the feat was not impossible, it was rare and evident of a high skill level and elite classification. Scott Tucker made history when he won his third consecutive T1 National Championship at the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) National Championship Runoffs this past weekend.

His six SCCA Runoffs appearances have been good indicators of his improvement as a driver during his young, 6-year-old career. The past three Runoffs championships haven’t been won easily, but instead earned by Tucker’s skillful maneuvering, smart strategizing and an overall enormous drive to win. The 2011 Runoffs were no different, resulting in a suspenseful, action-packed race that wasn’t sure until the very last moments.

Tucker this year opted for a Microsoft Office-sponsored Porsche 996 Twin-Turbo, the first departure from the Ferrari 430 Challenge he’d driven to the previous two wins under the same sponsor. The new car gave Tucker more power, which proved useful for a tough Dodge Viper driven by competitor David Pintaric, who pursued Tucker’s lead for the entire duration of the race. Tucker’s Porsche was built and developed by Kelly Moss Motorsports, led by Jeff Stone, in conjunction with Tucker’s Level 5 Motorsports. The unique four-wheel-drive Porsche was just the ticket to get Tucker to the top of the podium three years running.

On the first lap of the historic 4-mile, 14-turn course at Road America, a heavy accident put the entire field under a full-course caution for more than 20 minutes, which built the pressure leading into the final six laps, essentially creating a six-lap mini sprint race to the finish. Whereas in his 2009 and 2010 races, Tucker danced between first and second places, switching with competitor Scott Buttermore throughout, in 2011 he commanding the front for the entire event. Pintaric managed to get next to the Porsche on several occasions, Tucker never let go of the lead while running the 12-lap, 40-minute timed race. Tucker’s ultimate victory placed .728 seconds between him and Pintaric, but the win wasn’t obvious until the final turn on the very last lap.

“It ended up being a great race,” Tucker said. “There was pressure on me everywhere. Pintaric’s driving never let up; he pushed me to the limit. There wasn’t a lap to give, and that made for a good fight during a six-lap sprint race.”

Tucker’s historic third consecutive win was also a mile marker for his personal career. The 2011 SCCA Runoffs championship marked his 60th career win, and his first in the STO category. The race was also the debut of the Porsche Tucker drove.

“I’m extremely proud of this win,” Tucker said. “Three consecutive national championships is definitely something to be proud of and something we worked incredibly hard for. In my six years at the Runoffs, I’ve never faced a win that came easy. I’m proud of our entire Level 5 Motorsports team.”

The caution in lap one made this the second consecutive Runoffs in which Tucker drove a shortened race. The previous year, an incident delay put a 15-minute limit on the entire race. “It would have been fun to go for it for a clean race,” Level 5 team manager David Stone said. “But Scott was focused on going out and driving his hardest and not making a single mistake, and that’s what he did today.”

The Runoffs’ fall scheduling have made them a good focal point for the Level 5 Motorsports seasons, a big race between the majority of the season and the giant season-enders of Petit Le Mans and the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup championship. Tucker’s ability to fend off challengers without letting up is clear evidence of his increasing dominance in the racing industry, and his band new Porsche is just a preview of the power the team expects from its brand new Honda HPD ARX-01g at Road Atlanta in Petit Le Mans next weekend.

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Scott Tucker and Level 5 Motorsports plan on making history in this weekend’s SCCA National Championship Runoffs at Road America, as Tucker aims to become one of the very few drivers with three consecutive National Championship titles in one of the country’s most prestigious racing events.

Following his recent success at Laguna Seca where he clinched back-to-back American Le Mans Series championships following his fourth LMP2 victory of the season, Tucker shifts his focus to Friday’s championship race, which will see the accomplished road racer take the wheel of a specially prepared, Microsoft Office 2010-sponsored Porsche 996 Twin-Turbo.

“For me, personally, winning my third consecutive National Championship would be an incredible achievement that I have worked very hard for,” said Tucker, who notched his 59th career victory last weekend. “Winning any championship is extremely difficult. All you can do is prepare the best you know how and do you best on track and see where the chips fall at the checkered flag.”

The project began early this year when Level 5 bought the 500-plus horsepower, four-wheel drive Porsche. Led by Kelly Moss Motorsports’ Jeff Stone, both KMM and Level 5 teamed up to transform the unique Porsche into a SCCA STO class-winning contender. The car underwent an extensive development program, led by Stone, which included a series of test runs with Porsche factory driver Patrick Long.

With two previous National Championships in a Ferrari 430 Challenge car in the T1 category, Tucker competed in four early-season SCCA events at Sebring International Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway with a modified 430 Challenge car for the STO class before the decision was made to go with with the radical 996 Twin-Turbo.

Led by project manager Ed Zabinski and engineered by veteran Jeff Braun, there’s high expectations for the Porsche 996 Twin-Turbo heading into Friday morning’s 13-lap or 40-minute race on the famed Road America circuit, one of the premier road racing venues in North America.

“We really tried to bring all of the best guys in the program,” said Zabinski, who is also the car’s entrant. “I’m pretty happy at the way it turned out. The Porsche has developed into a reliable car. I think we’re looking pretty good.”

Everyone on the team has high expectations, especially following Tucker’s impressive performance in qualifying on Wednesday. He recorded a best lap of 2:16.462, which stands as the overall quickest time among the STO field earning the pole position heading into Friday’ race at 8 30 am.

“We’ve been running in the top-three in all of the qualifying sessions this week. Scott loves the car,” Zabinski added. “I don’t know what the stats are, but there are only a few guys who have won three consecutive National Championships. We’ll certainly be going for that.”

The SCCA National Championship Runoffs, The Pinnacle of American Motorsports, will crown Sports Car Club of America’s Club Racing National Champions for the 48th-consecutive year in 2011. The best drivers from across North America convene on Road America’s historic four-mile road course in what is considered the “Olympics” of motorsports. This year’s event begins with four days of qualifying, Sept. 19-22, and concludes with three days of racing, Sept. 23-25.

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Five years ago, Scott Tucker was a private equity investor with a passion for race cars. Now, as he prepares to take on the American Le Mans Series Petit Le Mans championship race at Road Atlanta, he does so with a slew of victories from the 2011 season that have already secured the Level 5 Motorsports team with the Le Mans Prototype 2 class championship and positioned them at No. 2 in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup series.

For Tucker, this year’s season represents the next level of motorsports, a fitting embodiment of the very idea behind Level 5 Motorsports. “Five is my favorite number,” Tucker said. “It was always my number in the sports I played through high school and college.”

But it wasn’t until later in life that the number five really represented success for Tucker; as he continued his private equity investment career, he read a book on management that described a “level 5 candidate” as someone who could take a company to the next level.

Ironically, it wasn’t until even later in life that the number five meant top-of-the-podium finishes and international success for Tucker. And incidentally, he might have been the very “level 5″ person who made his motorsports company a success. He began the company in 2008, when he was just two years into his professional racing career at age 44. Although he didn’t have much experience, he had enough talent to fill a professional driver’s seat and a wealth of knowledge about the professional racing industry. He quickly joined up with Christophe Bouchut, one of the most successful endurance racers in the world, who became his mentor and co-driver. From there, Tucker has made careful, precise decisions regarding who drives his team’s cars and what cars they drive.

“That’s the whole genesis behind Level 5 [Motorsports], that everybody on our team, were trying to push it to the next level,” Tucker said. “We only hire and empower people within our organization who are ‘level 5′ candidates.

“It really came out of a management book, but it’s the blood that runs through our team,” he said.

Tucker has changed cars frequently, his most recent acquisition being an HPD ARX-01g cost-capped chassis in the LMP2 class. Last weekend, he drove a brand new Porsche 996 Turbo for the Sports Car Club of America’s National Championship Runoffs and won. The HPD ARX-01g made a stellar debut at the ALMS Monterey earlier this month at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway. Following his theme, Tucker scours the industry for the next greatest car with the most potential to deliver another level of horsepower and control. He ordered the first two ARX-01g models off the line.

He also fills his team roster with the most experienced, proven quality drivers in the world, but there’s also a strategic element. When Tucker was developing himself as a next-level driver, he relied heavily on Bouchut to be his lead driver, scoring points while Tucker took advantage of the practice time in race situations. Now, he’ll enter Petit Le Mans with Luis Diaz and Marino Franchitti, both LMP2 veterans with experience in HPD ARX models.

It might have been a bit of leftover high school superstition, or it might have been a management book-or it might have been Scott Tucker’s natural inclination to push the boundaries of his abilities, but the meaning behind Level 5 Motorsports has never been as true as in the 2011 season.

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Competitive sports car racing isn’t quite the great spectator sport that, say, football is: Flying past a checkered flag at 200 miles per hour doesn’t leave much room for a victory dance. But motorsports fans are just as important to drivers as football fans are to wide receivers.

Level 5 Motorsports owner and driver Scott Tucker starts and ends races with his fans. After drivers’ meetings at races, before he hits the track, he heads over to sign autographs for fans. “This is where it really starts,” he has said. “Having a big fan base coming to watch you gets everybody excited and pumped up.”

The truth is, Tucker would still race even if not a single person came out to watch him-which makes him the best kind of professional athlete: a man who genuinely loves the sport. His complete disregard for any of the perks that could come with being as successful as he has been, with a unique story to boot, have a way of drawing people to the sport: What would make an investor from Leawood, Kansas enter the world of professional sports car racing as a 44-year-old rookie? Tucker’s story, an anomaly in an industry in which drivers have often been training for decades by the time they hit 44, has caught the attention of the Discovery Channel, which aired the feature film “Daytona Dream,” about Tucker and Level 5’s 2010 quest and ultimate accomplishment of a podium finish after 24 hours of grueling, continuous competition.

Fans especially in the United States have looked to Tucker also because his is the first Le Mans Prototype entry from the country in 25 years. What made him enter the ALMS? Not a sponsorship or a pay raise or anything other than the fact that he simply wanted to, a move that then begs the question, what’s so cool about Le Mans Prototype cars? The answer is, a lot-something Tucker has helped promote to a fan base that is inundated with Nascar, Grand-Am and Ferrari more so than LMP.

In fact, Tucker withdrew from a handful of important races in the 2011 season while he awaited the finishing touches on a brand new, cost-capped Honda vehicle for the team. For Level 5, which was on a breakaway winning season, the car had to be worth surrendering points and podium appearances. For Tucker, it absolutely was. He’d been monitoring updates on the car and decided it was the best model available in the LMP2 class.

“The fans are important to me because ultimately, we feel the same way about competitive sports car racing,” Tucker said. “Only, I get to be the one behind the wheel, and if I can share that with them, and they’re excited about it too, then that’s the best thing.”

Not that Tucker is a particularly difficult figure to rally behind. Not only is his story captivating and his passion for the sport undeniable-his record is pretty darn good. He won his second consecutive T1 division national championship at the SCCA runoffs at Road America, and in 2010, he served Ferrari as a test driver as it developed the next generation of supercar, the 599XX. In 2009, Tucker scored a single-season record of 10 victories in the Ferrari Challenge series and won the Ferrari Challenge Dealership Championship for Boardwalk Ferrari. He also won the Sports Car Club of America National Championship in a Ferrari 430.

After working his way through the Ferrari Challenge series and the Grand-Am series, Tucker, along with mentor and co-driver Bouchut, took an opportunity for Le Mans Prototype class competition and in 2010 won the LMP class championship, which bumped them up to the LMP2 class for 2011.

With drivers’ championships all but official this year for Tucker and Bouchut, the Level 5 Motorsports team continues to deliver action-packed, podium-worthy performances for its fans. Having stayed mostly out of the limelight, Tucker isn’t your typical sports hero, but that’s because he’s as much a fan of the sport as he is a driver in it.

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