After a long, cold winter where we did a little off-season preparation but mostly a lot of sitting around getting snowed on, we were more than ready to get the 2010 autocross season started. That opportunity came courtesy of the National Capital Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America, which runs eight or ten events during the season.

We did have bigger things on the horizon, with our trip to Myrtle Beach looming large on the other side of the weekend being the biggest. But taking time out to grab a couple cars and flog them around the cones locally, knocking the winter rust off in advance of putting our reputations on the line down south next week, seemed like a good idea.

Kate was going to run her regular ride, the Ugly Duckling '93. The wheels and tires she ran last year were buried in the back of the garage, and not that good anyway, so we experimented with a set of stock Miata 14" seven-spoke wheels and Toyo Proxes R1Rs we picked up last fall. I elected to take the Mazdaspeed MX-5 but I had a secret weapon up my sleeve: I was going to swap out the heavy 17" wheels and General Exclaim UHP tires for my Enkeis with Potenzas. But my nerfarious plan was stymied when I discovered that the wheel weights attached to the inside of the Enkeis wouldn't clear the MSM's brake calipers. With no other alternatives, the stockers went back on.

When I ran with the BMW group last fall, the course was a good mix of tight spots and sweepers. The first course of the new year had plenty of the same, but the tight spots were really, really tight. Some of this had to be done, as speeds had to be kept down as the course had to work around a couple of concrete islands. This meant a pair of slaloms ending with hard ninety-degree turns approaching those islands sufficiently slowed the pace in what was already a couple of slow elements.

There was one element, coming out of the lower lot, that was a cone-heavy juke to the left. I think that was designed to make sure nobody got a clean run as car after car picked off the right cone on the exit. You either had to tiptoe through it, or go hammer-down and risk sending that poor cone flying yet again. The finish also had some serious bends heading into the timing beam, followed by the shortest stop box ever seen.

We watched the morning session finish up, walked the course, then found out we'd be working the course before driving. This is a good thing in my book. There's no better tool to teach where the trouble spots are than to watch other drivers demonstrate them the hard way.

The fast guys were dipping into the 45-second range, and while I didn't fancy myself as one to be included in that group, I started out thinking that a time in the 52ish-second range would be a good place to run. Then I strapped the helmet on and obliterated the course.

If I was really good, I'd follow that word "course" there with the word "record". Since I'm not that good, I had to leave that "record" word out. On that first run, I thought the cone carnage would be record-setting. It seemed that on every corner, I'd hear that dreadful "thump" that meant yet another traffic cone got whacked. I had to tell myself not to look in the rear-view mirror to see if the course workers were coming out of their hiding places to set everything I knocked down back in place, because I was sure they were cursing that black Miata that was just absolutely wrecking shop as they chased what I scattered about.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the results were published and they reported that I only was credited with one cone penalty for that run. Might have been miscommunication, might have been charity or pity, but I'm not complaining.

The second run was faster, which is good; it was also sloppier, which is bad. I picked up seven tenths as well as two cones, so that was a throwaway. I slowed down in the third run but it was clean, and on the fourth run I finished the day with my best time as well as no cone penalties.

When the results were published, we were very happy to see that I wound up third out of the nine drivers who partook in the X3 class. Even better, looking at the times, I was not very far from winning the class. My fast time was 50.930 seconds, just a whisker slower than the second place RX8's 50.792 and less than eight tenths slower than the winning S2000's 50.144.

This leaves me wondering how well I could have done had I been able to get the grippier tires onto the MSM, but not wondering obsessively.

Kate's day went well as she was out in the Duckling wearing those questionable R1Rs for the first time. The most significant development during the day was (gasp!) she hit her first cone. It was near the end of the course on her second run, putting a bit of a damper on a run where she had picked up three seconds over her first try. On the plus side, she cleaned up her act for her final two runs and made her time of record on her third. This placed her eleventh in a crowded field of fourteen X4 class.

We left feeling pretty good about our performances and we're looking forward to running with the BMW folks again next month when they run just up the road at Blue Crabs Stadium in our fair city.

Our next autocross will be a low-key affair. We're heading to Myrtle Beach, SC to enjoy the fourth annual "Miatas at Myrtle Beach" gathering. Last year, they added autocross and oval track runs at Myrtle Beach Speedway to the festivities, and that's where the bug originally bit us. We did well then, and now that we've had a summer of organized competition under our belts, we hope to get even closer to the front this time around.

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