It seems like we should run with Capital Driving Club a lot more often. They run about twice as much as any other club in the area, and most of those events are fairly close to home. Those events are inexpensive, low-key, and fun. But due to schedule conflicts or other things, we only get to a handful of their events.

We got to run with them last Saturday, and I'm not sure if it was me or Kate who wanted to run it more. I was dragging my feet registering, and one night during the week leading up to the 25th I was hiding in my racing room behind the iRacing wheel. Kate poked her head in to ask how much horsepower the Miata has. "Which one?" "The white ones." I told her and asked why she needed to know, but she wouldn't say. A minute later she was back. "How much does the Miata weigh?" I was further curious, but volunteered that information anyway.

It wasn't till after I was done racing that I realized that Kate had gone ahead and signed us both up to run with CDC on the 25th. The club's indexing system is based on estimated horsepower, estimated vehicle weight, and tire type, and that information has to be given when registering. She got that information, and signed us both up.

We're not too far from being newbies to this whole sport in the first place, but part of our philosophy here at Parsimonious Racing is to help other drivers when we can, especially those who are new as well. We'd have ample opportunity to do that as a couple of friends were getting their feet wet.

Kate met Kristi (Kristy? I'm not good with names) at autocross school back in the spring. Earlier this month, we tagged along as she shopped for and bought her first Miata. Kristy originally signed up with that Miata, but arrived with her tried and true Saabaru 92X instead.

Nick is a Chesapeake Area Roadsters member who also went to school earlier this year. He has a fairly stock '90 Miata that looks great and goes fairly decently as well.

Nick asked me to take his car out so he could see what it was capable of. I consider myself any sort of standard-bearer when it comes to this, but I suppose at least getting some sort of baseline might help give him something to shoot for when it was his turn. Regardless, I agreed, and offered him Captain Slow for his morning runs in exchange.

The course started out simply, almost too simply, but it made up for that at the top of the Bowie lot with a looping section that tested both car control and driver memory. Once it was shown to us it made some sense; with me it clicked fairly quickly but I don't know if the others figured it out quite as fast. The highlight was a run up the hill, though a fairly open slalom, that found a cone box halfway through. The box itself was tricky since drivers passed through it twice, going through it north-south and then looping around to go through it east-west later in the run. On the other side of that box was another straight line to a sharp turn.

I ran first, in Nick's car. It's a mostly stock car but the suspension pieces are new, the tires are a good choice for 14" wheels, and the car's fairly low-mileage so it hasn't lost much of its original oomph. But it certainly didn't carry speed going up the hill like Slow does. I was also figuring out the course and it took some laps to figure out where gunning it is good and easing up is better. At the end of the morning session, I was sitting on a best lap of 43.8 seconds.

For the rest, navigation was a problem. I tagged along as much as I could and I think it helped, and by the end of the day everyone could work on speed rather than just not getting lost.

When I got in Slow, it was like meeting an old friend. Nothing against Nick's car, but I have a lot of confidence in mine. For some reason, I know that I can back off earlier heading into the sharper corners knowing that I'll be able to stick all the way through the turn and still have some power to dig out of that slow section. That confidence means a lot lower likelihood of waiting past the point of no return before braking.

I got down to a 42.007 for my next-to-last run and though that improving on that would be pretty hard to do. I figured out that going flat out up the hill, with just a little breathe going through the box before returning to hammer-down time, got me a lot of time without having to worry about how I was going to make the hard right turn at the end of the straight. But I suited up for the last run, and I thought it was a good, solid run. As I went through the finish I was surprised to see I picked up nearly half a second, finishing the day with a 41.589. Don't know where that came from, but I'm glad I found it.

It got even better. In the preliminary results I wound up 20th out of 95 entrants in raw time - that's straight time, unadjusted for engine/weight/tires. With those factors multiplied in, I was 14th. Winding up in the top fifth of everyone there had me floored. The next surprise: CDC has a "small bore" championship for cars whose engines are 1.8L or smaller. I wound up winning that class, which had ten or so entrants.

With any luck, the rest of our little gang had as fun a day running with CDC as I did. Here's hoping that they return to join us at the next CDC event, which will be on Saturday, October 9th.

Parsimonious Racing returns to the parking lot on Sunday, Oct. 3 when the Washington DC Region of SCCA springs back in action at FedEx Field.

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