Walter Huber Scholarship

The Walter Huber Scholarship is designed to provide financial support for 1st time entrances to either the Solo Nationals, National Runoffs, United States Road Rally Challenge or like events in the other Specialties.

Guidelines for the Annual NNJR-SCCA
Walter Huber Scholarship Award
(Established June 28, 2018)

a) Must be a member of the Region, in good standing for two years or more
b) Must be nominated by the Specialty Chair or BOT Member
c) Must not have attended a SCCA ‘Year End’ National Level event in the past, (ie “National Solo”, “National Runoff”, United States Road Rally Challenge” (USRRC) or the like event in the other Specialties).
d) This Scholarship Fund is open to both competitors and volunteer workers
e) The individual must be approved by a majority vote of the Walter Huber Scholarship Committee and confirmed by the Board of Trustees.
f) The individual must be paying their own way and not being sponsored/supported by a third party and for whom it would not otherwise be financially viable an opportunity to attend the event
g) The ‘Grant’ of $500 will be award to offset event expenses, with valid receipts

Year – Member

2022 – Mike KobialkaMike Kobialka is a member of the NNJR SCCA since 2009 and has been autoxing with us ever since. Mike is part of our core staff as an equipment manager and helps set up T&S. He is there first thing in the morning and is basically the last to leave as he drives the truck back to storage. Mike runs a NA Miata in STS for many years now, and the car has earned him a few National level trophies. Mike will be attending the Solo Nationals for the first time ever and we wish him the best of luck. PS: He will be co-driving Rich DiMarco’s Miata in STS.

2021 – William Petrow   The Board of Trustees is pleased to announce that William Petrow has been named the 2021 recipient of the Walter Huber ‘Scholarship Fund’, which was designed to provide financial support for 1st time entry or volunteers to “year-end” National level events. William Petrow has been a long time NNJR member on and off since 2001, but has in recent years been a regular competitor in many of our local autocross events, as well as a regular on the ProSolo tour and National Tour events including Solo Nationals Finale in Nebraska since 2017. He has been running in BS, AS, SS and SSR in a BMW M2, Porsche Cayman 718 and Cayman GT4. He has also competed in a number of TSD rallies over the years including the old famed Pine Barrens Express. Recently William has become our region chairman for the Rallycross / Rallysprint program. New Jersey has never had this program before and he has been hard at work to find a venue for us to run. While he competed in SCCA rallycross in the early and mid 2000’s, he has never been to a national level event and decided to go to the Rallycross Nationals in Ohio this year to volunteer and gain more experience for our program here in NNJR. While there, he helped all of the weekend’s competitors through tech inspection and he was lucky enough to pair up with a friend to run in the Modified AWD class (MA) in a 1996 Subaru Impreza with a 6 cylinder swap. Amongst his vast SCCA experience, he has also competed in stage rally all over the US since 2009 running in FWD, RWD and AWD cars in almost every class! While starting in a Subaru bugeye WRX in Production GT, he moved on to an Open class classic Impreza for 2010. In 2011 he was a Ford Performance backed driver in the then new Ford Fiesta. In recent years he has moved to RWD using Nissan platforms rallying a 240SX in Group2 and Group 5, but has just completed building a 370Z as his new rally machine. He has been crew chief for many national class winning teams, worked for teams at WRC Mexico and X Games Rally and Rallycross, competed in US Rallycross at NJMP in 2010 which then became Global RallyCross (GRC), been an event organizer for rallysprints, commentator for multiple American Rally Association events and has been a volunteer at rallies all over the country since 2001, when SCCA still had ProRally. He has also competed in drifting with US Drift ProAm series and the Mt. Washington Hillclimb, Climb to the Clouds. 2014 CTTC saw him finish in the top 10 overall while taking the Rally 2WD class record! Since 2008 he has been building rally and other race cars at his shop in Union City called Broken Motorsports. 2018 he created an online store catering specifically to motorsports called Bleeding Tarmac.

2020 – Not Awarded

2019 – Jeff Yatkso The Board of Trustees is please to announce that Jeff Yatsko has been named the 2019 recipient of the Walter Huber ‘Scholarship Fund’, which was designed to provide financial support for 1st time entrances to either the Solo Nationals, National Runoffs, United States Road Rally Challenge or like events in the other Specialties. Jeff has been an indispensable asset to the NNJR Solo program the last 25 years he has yet to make the trip out to Lincoln.Jeff is always at our Solo events to give a helping hand to literally anyone with car issues. He has been a NNJR member for 21 years and has always been involved in Solo program, with a few Pine Barrens Express rallies thrown in for good measure!Jeff has run many different cars throughout his autocross “career”, from the ubiquitous Acura Integra and multiple Honda Civics, to an Autodynamics Formula Vee, to a couple of Honda S2000’s, and the ever-popular NA Miata.More recently, Jeff found a unique path by way of a pair of turbocharged Koreans; first with a Kia Forte 5 and now with a Hyundai Elektra GT Sport, the latter of which Jeff will be competing with (in HS) in Lincoln.We truly wish Jeff all the best in Lincoln and congratulation on the award.

2018 – Chris Laprus Chris started autocrossing with NNJR in 2014. He quickly became a regular, and showed a lot of interest in helping the region. In 2016 he became one of our worker chiefs where he’s been a huge asset to the club. He’s quickly progressed to being one of the fast drivers in the region. He started out driving a CS BRZ, and moved on to a DS WRX, followed by a BS Evo and in 2018 a AS C5 Z06. When he prepared the Evo for STU in 2017 he quickly became a regular fixture near the top of the results, and finished 5th place in the 2017 driver of the year standings. Chris will be attending the Solo Nationals for the first time this year.