After a couple months away from the cone game, Parsimonious Racing sprang into action with Mazda Sportscar Club of Washington, which puts on a couple low-key autocrosses each year. The first one was Easter Sunday and we did not partake, but we were armed and ready for August 9 at Bowie Baysox Stadium.

The weapons of choice were both Kate's cars. She was making the maiden voyage in the white '93, and I was going to also bring a white car to its first parking lot romp. We were called out by a fellow Mazdaspeed MX-5 owner looking for something to compare his car to, and in the last week approaching the event I decided to accommodate him and changed my entry to run the '05 MSM.

The Mazdaspeed Smackdown wasn't exactly going to be a fair fight, though. Skeeler, the other MSM driver, had signed up for both the morning and afternoon sessions, while we only signed up for afternoon. He, theoretically, would have a huge advantage by getting runs on the course, familiarizing himself with the layout before I was even out of bed.

Skeeler's advantage wasn't that great, though, since an accident in the morning session put things on hold for quite a while. Once that was taken care of, it was time to get back in action for the morning people.

We had walked the course during the delay and found it made up of a couple tight, twisty ends connected by a pair of long, relatively speaking, straightaways. The tricky bits were going to be the two low-speed elements: one immediately after the start, and the other leading onto the final straight before the finish.

With the course appearing to be relatively easy to follow, my task was to come to grips with the turbocharged Mazdaspeed MX-5. I don't drive the car that often as it's Kate's toy, and the power delivery is quite different compared to a standard Miata as the boost kicks in at 3500-4000 RPM.

Out of the gate, the first element was a quick left-right. It came up so quickly that it was tough to figure out where to do the 1-2 shift. Coming out of the right turn, the course opened up into a nice sweeper that the MSM took at an angle thanks to boost and General Exclaim UHP tires, which were good but not great. The sweeper ended with a 90-degree left that started a couple offset gates and the first straight, which I took with the right foot on the floor and the MSM's rev limiter cutting the power.

One time I tried this straight in third gear, but since the straight ended at a very tight slalom it was tough trying to slow for that at the same time as managing a shift back to second, so that plan was abandoned after just one try.

Out of the slalom on the bottom of the course, we had to make a right towards the most frustrating element, a 120-degree right that led to the second straight. At first I wasn't shifting for that turn but after seeing most drivers going down to first gear for it, I reconsidered. Don't know if it made me faster, but it sounded better than trying to dig out of a near stop in a higher gear.

By the end of our first six runs, I had at least come close to Skeeler's morning times, if not beat them outright. He got to make his afternoon runs, though, and got two or three seconds faster (41-second laps vs. my mid-43s). When his session finished, we got four more runs and I shaved more time off, but not enough to close the gap. Since this was a glorified test-and-tune (no trophies, no recognition, just get in the car and run), that wasn't a big deal. We learned a little more about reading courses, smoothing out inputs, and applying power. I think that'll help down the road.

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