2010 NCCBMWCCA Season Recap

The National Capital Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America hosted eight events during the 2010 season, some as close to home as Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium, while others were as far-flung as Summit Point Raceway's Washington Circuit. I had run once with them in 2009, taking Kate's box-stock "Duckling" '93 Miata to a third place in a nine-car "other" category, and came away from that event with a pretty good impression of the group.

Since we were concentrating on SCCA competition in 2010, the thought was to run NCC events whenever and wherever they were convenient. I certainly had no plans to go all the way to Summit Point (two hours from home) for an autocross, especially with my being a night-shift worker. But things were looking encouraging at the start of the season.

For starters, NCC decided to treat non-BMW drivers as somewhat equals. While they had previously lumped non-BMWs into two catch-all categories separated by tire type (and the rather pedestrian Michelin all-seasons I ran on the Duckling were still considered 'race' tires by their treadwear rating breakdown) and did not make them eligible for season-ending awards, both those things changed for 2010. Non-BMWs were broken into four classes based primarily on engine displacement, and they'd be competing for their own trophies.

The first event was to be held at Bowie Baysox Stadium. As early entries were coming in, we saw a lot of local hotshoes in small-displacement cars filling up the "X4" class. Seeing that power-adders bumped a Miata up to the less-populated "X3" class, I decided to aim for the easier class and entered with Kate's Mazdaspeed MX-5. The course was a tricky one, since the club uses Bowie's lower lot but made sure speeds were kept down near the concrete islands that separate the lower lot from the upper. This made for some tricky maneuvering and no shortage of cones to be chased, but I only picked off one, in my first run, and finished the day decently, fourth out of nine in class, just eight tenths off the class winner. Kate ran her Duckling and wound up 10th out of a crowded 14-car X4 class.

The second event was at Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium and of course we were going to run that, since we'll support any club that chooses to run so close to home. I continued in X3 with the MSM and Kate decided she wanted to go faster than last time and took Captain Slow, our well-prepped '90 Miata. She had better results, relatively speaking, than I did, as she was seventh out of 12 in that class. I found the MSM's short second gear to be limiting on the wide-open course laid out, and spent far too much time on the rev limiter. This cost me, but not as badly as attempts to shift to third and back to second at times did. I was fourth out of seven, but over two seconds out of the class win, so I wasn't bragging too much about my performance.

While event two was nice and close to home, event three was way out in West Virginia. I had no intentions of running the Summit Point events but figured, fairly close to the cutoff to sign up, that I should try it at least once. It was a tough day for me, though, since I went there straight from work, which meant no sleep, and didn't bother putting my contact lenses in. Leading up to the event, I was also feeling lazy and didn't bother changing the MSM's wheels and tires from the heavy stock wheels and iffy tires to lighter rims and more racy rolling stock. Add in the new-to-me venue, which was very slick and took a gentle touch to keep the rear wheels planted. The course was again a fast one, another opportunity to show off the MSM's short gearing. With all that, I suppose I should have been happy with getting fifth out of eleven cars in class. However, I consider it an opportunity missed.

Event four was also at Summit Point, and both Kate and I made the trip as we figured she should get a look at the place as well. It was another event run after a night of work, but I was fortunate that Kate did the driving to and from the place this time and I could sneak in a few minutes of shuteye on the ride there. When we got there we flipped a coin to see which of us would run first, and she won that. If you asked her, though, she would say that she lost, since she prefers to work the course and watch how other people drive it before tackling it herself. But she didn't, and she wound up taking the MSM to seventh out of nine entries in X3.

I suited up for my five runs, and put in some decent ones to start. But as I was finishing my third run, sprinkles were appearing on the windshield. I got the top up and went for a fourth run, but the rain was making its presence felt and I only got slower. By the time the fifth run came around, it was a full-fledged downpour. Some were smart and declined to take that last run. Some ran it and wound up falling off the pavement. I took my shot but it was comically slow, seventeen seconds off my fast time of the day. That fast time was good enough for third in class, but boy I wish I had two more shots in the dry. If the coin flip wound up going the other way, I probably would have been in better shape, so I guess both me and Kate lost there.

At this point, we had run all four of the NCC events held to this point. It was probably about here where I quickly calculated points and realized I had a halfway decent shot at the class championship, and committed to run the rest of the season with the group. There's nothing like a points chase to keep me motivated, even though my primary rival was very capable of going a lot faster than I was.

We were back in Waldorf for the fifth event of the season. It was a great course, great day overall in fact. Kate was driving Captain Slow and got fourth out of seven in X4, just one spot behind perennial favorite AJ in his Civic. In X3, it was my best result of the year with a runner-up finish behind James and his dastardly Corolla. If it's any consolation, the Corolla broke badly and needed to be towed home, but even I would put up with that headache if it meant winning the class that day. It was definitely coming down to me and James for the X3 title, but since I had no realistic shot at beating him in his car, he had to stop showing up for events for me to be able to get the crown.

James' fast Corolla was repaired in time for the next autocross, which was back at Bowie Baysox Stadium. But its repair was temporary, as the car ran out of brakes early on and only completed one run. The problem for us was that its one run was fast enough to handily beat everyone else in the class. After a day of what was a fun course on the little Bowie lot, I got third in class while Kate was ninth out of eleven.

The season was winding down with just a pair of events to go as the calendar turned to September. The next-to-last event of the year was back at Waldorf. Kate's plan was to run Captain Slow, and I was mulling over running that as well, entering what was an X4 car in X3 to keep the season points tally going. But a busted radiator and a half-assed repair saw Slow sitting on the Waldorf lot weeping antifreeze from an improperly seated hose so it was not going to get to play on this day. Kate and I returned to the MSM and hoped for the best. The course was fantastic, one of the best we ran on all year. It again put the MSM's shortcomings front and center, but we got through with decent times. I managed third in class with Kate ninth. James picked up a ride in a NC Miata and still beat me, so I'm pretty sure the title was sealed for him there. But we still had one more chance to beat him.

It was back to Summit Point to finish off the year with NCC. I mixed things up and brought Captain Slow, thinking a typical long-legged NCC course would be better suited to the naturally-aspirated Miata. James showed up with a new toy, an ITB road racing Toyota MR2, and beat me with it despite his pessimism that morning. The slick pavement was still there, especially at the start, but once we got going it was a good course. Strangely enough, I turned my fast time while giving someone a ride-along. Not sure how that happened.

We finished the season second in X3 points after running all the events. Considering that at the start of the season we didn't expect to run enough with this group to qualify for season points, that's not a bad result at all. It's a fun group to run with, and they put together some very fun courses at a variety of lots as well. Will we try to contend for a championship with NCC in 2011? It's hard to say. There's still the fact that they run events fairly far from home, that's a deterrent. We could still compete, since they will drop a certain number of events, but that's a tough way to run for a title. It might also come down to dollars and cents. With some fairly big plans to tackle bigger events at places that can hardly be considered local to us, we'll have to pick and choose when we do run locally carefully.

Even if we don't run with NCC full-time this coming season, I'm sure we'll make sure we do run with them when they come to Waldorf because, like we said earlier, we'll support any club that runs events that close to home.

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