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.

AI event #2 was the first shot at a different format. At Blue Crabs, we made four runs in the morning, broke for lunch, and made four runs in the afternoon. Our best morning time was added to the best afternoon time and that's how we were stacked up. It was a good event with lots of track time, and the downtime in the middle was a welcome break on a hot day. We had a guest star in STS this day, as E Stock standout John Nicholaysen ran Shawn Roberts' car since his was being repaired. In the morning, John had beat me by a hair more than a tenth of a second - that was pretty encouraging. In the afternoon, though, I only picked up a couple tenths over my morning time while John found two full seconds. That was my first second place finish of the year, while Kate was fourth and getting closer to my time.

We both skipped the third AI event of the year at FedEx Field since we were partaking in the SCCA Level II autocross school instead.

The fourth event saw another guest star, but this one was part of Parsimonious Racing. Aure Delaitre, a STR regular, wanted to see how our car handled compared to his mostly stock Miata. We got our first experience being co-drivers and the results were very positive. Aure won the class, in my car, beating my car's owner, while I wound up second in class by less than two seconds. Kate also ran, with her own car, but instead of running in the STS open class, she moved to the PAXed Ladies class to give some competition for Alison Mondul, wife of STR standout Michael Gross.

It was back to Blue Crabs Stadium for Event #5, and another doubleheader day. This time, though, the course was reversed during the lunch break. This increased the challenge somewhat and I thought it was a nice wrinkle. STS, this time, was just me and Kate. She started the day in her Duckling but it was starting to suffer with a slipping clutch and proved to not be the weapon of choice for the rest of the day. During the lunch break we decided to share Captain Slow and that helped Kate's times dramatically. Having a car that'll actually accelerate when the gas pedal is pushed down is good for autocross times. I beat her on this day, and I got my first "1st place" AI trophy.

The final event was at Blue Crabs Stadium again, and it was a conventional four-run day. The main competition this day was Yaroslav in his Toyota MR2, and we traded the class lead for the first couple runs. I put up a faster first run, but he was better on his second. I beat that on my second, and we both regressed on our third runs with both of us picking up cones. On the last run, he improved by over a full second, and I had my doubts that I could match that. I picked up a couple tenths, but that wasn't enough. I got another second place, but it was good enough to sew up the championship. I got 34 points to Kate's 29, and we had our 1-2 finish.

We're looking forward to running the full 2011 AI schedule, since it's a no-brainer to support a club that will be running all of its events at Blue Crabs Stadium now. Whether we run well enough to repeat our championship one-two next year remains to be seen.

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