Autocross Recap: Zoomin the Mountains of East Tennessee, June 5 2010

Parsimonious Racing's First Win

We've had pretty good results over the last couple years running autocrosses that are held as part of Miata owner get-togethers in relatively far-flung locations. If it weren't for these events, we probably wouldn't have discovered this little sport and gotten as deep into it as we have, so I suppose we have them to thank for us being here in the first place.

It all started at "Miatas at Myrtle Beach III" in March 2009. We hadn't autocrossed in something like twenty years before this, but we did well with an unprepared car on just terrible tires. In the elimination-formatted event, we made it to the final four before getting a cone in the finals and getting eliminated from the competition. Fast forward to "MiataWorld II" in Dallas a couple months later, and with the same car on the same tires, we again weren't terrible. This launched Kate and me onto our little adventure that is documented in this space.

Now that we're experienced autocrossers with better cars, better tires, and slightly better ideas about what we're doing out there, there's less surprise when we do well at Miata event autocrosses. We wound up second-best at "Miatas at Myrtle Beach IV" earlier this year, and now we have our first win.

The event was "Zoomin' the Mountains of East Tennessee", which has grown from just a car show to a full weekend of driving and socializing in just four years. This year was the first time we made the trip to Johnson City, and the main attraction was a Saturday spent in and around Bristol Motor Speedway, including laps on the high-banked concrete NASCAR half-mile and an autocross in an ajoining parking lot. The laps on the track were for fun and the cool factor, while the autocross was serious competition.

We lined up for the autocross with the unfamiliar procedure of getting two practice runs, then three timed runs, without having the benefit of walking the course beforehand. Fortunately, the good folks at Bristol lined the entire course with floud, making the possibility of getting lost very difficult. It was a simple course that went there and back and there and back again, with slaloms and bus stops breaking up the straights between sweepers. At first there was one visually jarring bit where pointer cones were pointing in the opposite direction of where the marked course went, but that was fixed quickly and navigation was not a further problem.

When we lined up to make our runs, we checked out the competition. Last year's winner was there in a Mazdaspeed MX-5 like Kate's, and one very fast driver from Myrtle Beach was there in his low-slung '97M. There were a few near-stock NA Miatas, a couple NBs, and a single NC. At the risk of jinxing myself, I started thinking top-three right off the bat.

The biggest problem I had, at least early on, was running clean laps. There was one tricky slalom where I repeatedly charged into far too fast and could not get out of there without knocking one or two cones out of my way as I barrelled through. On the plus side, I was putting up really fast times otherwise, and even with the cones I was going to be in pretty good shape, but knowing that I could be doing better was certainly driving me to try and get one run put together where I was both clean and fast. On my next-to-last run I managed it and the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.

I think the worst thing an autocrosser could hear as he pulls up to the start line is the lady who's tracking times saying "It looks like you're leading the way here." It's one thing to think you're probably doing well but another to be told it fairly unambiguously. On the other hand, it did get me to go out there for my last timed run and really try and put a good lap in, and I think I did as nobody beat me and I wound up winning by a pretty good margin. My best clean time was somewhere around 51 seconds flat and I think second place was three seconds back.

Kate had a good time, and she was very competitive as well. I don't know what her expectations were going into the event since she elected not to put on her new Kuhmo XS tires for this trip, instead running with her stock (heavy) 17" MSM Racing Hart wheels and nearly-gone General Exclaim UHP tires. But even with those not necessarily providing ultimate speed and grip, Kate drove that car to a very close third place finish, beating out fellow Chespaeake Area Roadsters club member Nick by a scant 0.03 seconds.

I imagine that a good chunk of my success came from having a well-sorted car with sticky tires, so coming in first, while ranking very high on the Cool Scale, isn't coming as a complete surprise. Seeing Kate come in third with a pretty much box stock car on old tires speaks volumes about how far she's come as a driver. Maybe by this time next year we'll have her '93 up to speed with proper suspension and a couple tweaks under the hood, and we can go back and run one-two at Bristol. Wouldn't that be cool?

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