2019 OUSCI Points Invitations After Four Events

OPTIMA's Search for the Ultimate Street Car, presented by Advance Auto Parts, runs at seven tracks each year. Invitations to the OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Invitational (OUSCI) presented by Advance Auto Parts are handed out to the top finishers in each class at each of these events. In addition to those entries, upon the conclusion of the regular season, each class (except for Outlaw) are awarded three invitations to the top-three competitors, who have not yet qualified. There are also ten additional entries handed out to the top competitors, who have not yet earned their invitation to the OUSCI, based on the points they've accumulated in their best-three events, regardless of the class they competed in during the season.

The thought behind this is that when the qualifying series went from ten events to seven, adding in those three class entries would maintain the same opportunities for competitors to make it to Las Vegas, even though there were three fewer qualifying event opportunities. The at-large invitations acknowledge that competitors in some classes may accumulate more points than competitors in other classes, so the at-large invitations are an effort to avoid penalizing a competitor for running in what would essentially be a more competitive class, where they might not be in that top group of three, but still have more points than every other competitor in other classes. All of the at-large entries could also come from a single class, if that's where all the highest point totals reside.

As the GTE Class for electric vehicles and the GTC Class for compact vehicles are the two newest and smallest classes, they tend not to have any competitors earn at-large entries. In fact, in the GTE Class, if no more than 10 vehicles compete all season long, all ten will receive OUSCI invitations (we're only at six vehicles so far). While sharing a list like this after just four of the seven events doesn't exactly paint an accurate picture of who is where in the standings, it does help folks start to think about the points they may need to accumulate in the latter part of the season.

While every season is different, we can say that generally speaking, at-large entries to the OUSCI in past seasons have needed at least 1,000 points to make the cut. So while this list shows points that many competitors have accumulated after just two events, once we run the Road America event, we'll begin to get a much clearer picture of who is likely to grab these at-large entries and who is not. Names not included on this list would include the top-three cars in each class, that have not yet earned invitations, as they would receive the class invitations. Ironically enough, of all the names that are listed, Kong Chang's point total may be the only number at this time, that may be enough to make the cut when the regular season wraps up. Everyone else on the list definitely has some work to do in the final three events, but here's how it looks as of today:

Last Five In:

First Five Out: