The culmination of a spring full of car preparation and a summer of learning if we put together something worth competing with was the SCCA Tire Rack Solo National Championships in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The days approaching our trip to Lincoln were hardly stress-free. Earlier in the week, I was rustled out of bed by a minor earthquake. If that wasn't disturbing enough, a hurricane was heading towards the southeast United States, with the Washington, D.C. area in its path. While we were going to be away when the hurricane was actually visiting the sleepy little 'burb of Waldorf, that doesn't mean we didn't have concerns about what was happening while we weren't around.

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It was a little less than a year ago that we decided we were going to make a run at the SCCA Tire Rack Solo National Championships ("Nationals"). While a year sounds like a long time to prepare for such an adventure, it seems like just yesterday as we start making final preparations for the haul out to Lincoln, Nebraska for the culmination of all our time and effort.

So what happened during those twelve months?

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When we decided it was time to get serious about autocrossing over the winter, the first big test on the calendar was the SCCA Toledo Tour, held on the July 4th weekend at the Toledo Express Airport.

If we wanted to go to the national championships, we had to run one of these tours to qualify or pay quite a steep extra entry fee for Nationals. Fortunately, there are a number of tours to choose from. We could have run one in the spring in south Georgia, or in May at Atlanta Motor Speedway, or early June at Dover International Speedway. Actually, that Dover one would have been great, except we already planned a trip elsewhere for that weekend.

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When the 2010 autocross season wound down back in November, we were ready for a little downtime. We participated in 27 events all told, starting in mid-March (NCCBMWCCA at Bowie) and not slowing down until late November (CDC at Frederick). We ran events in four states, as close to home as Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium and as far away as Bristol, Tennessee. We had just as many trophy days as frustration days, but we learned something new each time out and met a lot of great people along the way.

As we stare down 2011, with the season getting under way in just over a month's time, we've put together a battle plan that may not have us running quite as many events, but the ones we will run will be much more serious, taking us to new places with higher stakes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

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The National Capital Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America hosted eight events during the 2010 season, some as close to home as Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium, while others were as far-flung as Summit Point Raceway's Washington Circuit. I had run once with them in 2009, taking Kate's box-stock "Duckling" '93 Miata to a third place in a nine-car "other" category, and came away from that event with a pretty good impression of the group.

Since we were concentrating on SCCA competition in 2010, the thought was to run NCC events whenever and wherever they were convenient. I certainly had no plans to go all the way to Summit Point (two hours from home) for an autocross, especially with my being a night-shift worker. But things were looking encouraging at the start of the season.

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This is the group to run with if an autocrosser wants to take his sport seriously. And while the results don't exactly show how seriously we took it in 2010, they do show that we were capable of making a lot of progress from the start of the year to the end of the year.

The first thing to say when reviewing the WDCR SCCA season is to not look at the points standings. While I did run all of their events, I split time between two classes, just like what I did with Autocrossers Incorporated. With AI, I managed to run just enough events in one class to qualify for that class's season championship. With WDCR, that wasn't the case. I wound up splitting the seven-event season right down the middle, with the slight majority of events in the STR class in my 1999 Miata. But the performance just wasn't there with that car, and I only earned two points all year.

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Autocrossers Incorporated is a chapter club of SCCA's Washington DC Region. It's made up of a lot of SCCA members, as well as some folks who seem to only show up for AI events. It's a more laid-back group, with a "Pro" class where the big guns run against themselves (PAXed), leaving the open classes to us rank amateurs. It's where we made our first local event in June 2009, and we've run pretty much every time they've held an event since. It's run by good people who put together good courses, with the bonus of holding half their events in 2010 at Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium, a mere ten minutes from home.

When we were planning for the 2010 season, the idea was to run "Street Touring Roadster" class with the '99 Miata in SCCA and "Street Touring Sports" with the '90 (Captain Slow) with AI. But for some reason I can't immediately recall, I ran the first AI event at FedEx Field in STR. It was a pretty good debut in a big class: out of nine entries, I was fifth best. Kate ran STS with her '93 Miata and had a tough time, but things got better for her down the road.

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