When the 2010 autocross season wound down back in November, we were ready for a little downtime. We participated in 27 events all told, starting in mid-March (NCCBMWCCA at Bowie) and not slowing down until late November (CDC at Frederick). We ran events in four states, as close to home as Waldorf's Blue Crabs Stadium and as far away as Bristol, Tennessee. We had just as many trophy days as frustration days, but we learned something new each time out and met a lot of great people along the way.

As we stare down 2011, with the season getting under way in just over a month's time, we've put together a battle plan that may not have us running quite as many events, but the ones we will run will be much more serious, taking us to new places with higher stakes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Obviously, the bulk of our schedule will be made up of local SCCA and Autocrossers Inc. events. I remember when we started, we said we'd probably be perfectly happy avoiding SCCA events and concentrating on other clubs, but it quickly became apparent that if we were going to take this even partially seriously, we should be comparing ourselves against others who take this at least partially seriously themselves. This will continue as we will run the full local SCCA slate, which should be six events plus one practice day. AI has already unveiled its 2011 schedule, with all of its events taking place at Blue Crabs Stadium. Since that's close to home, running with them is a no-brainer. That we can usually bring home an AI trophy when we run with them is a nice bonus.

We passed on running the two biggest events run locally last year, those being the SCCA Northeast Divisional and the Pro Solo. It appears that neither will be on the schedule this time around, which relieves us the pressure to run the Pro. On the surface, Pro Solo looks like a lot of fun. But it's also where I saw far too many broken cars leave last year, and I don't think I'd want to subject the fleet to that abuse.

The biggest semi-local event appears to be a SCCA Solo National Tour event that will be held at Dover International Speedway. That's only two hours from home, though with it being a two-day event, will require a hotel stay. But the experience gained, being able to compare ourselves to national-level competition, will be priceless.

Then there's the big enchilada.

We heard a lot of people raving about the fun time they had at the SCCA Solo National Championship the last couple years. This had us thinking that we should take this in ourselves one of these days, and why not this year? We didn't burn ourselves out last year, we proved to be at least a little competitive on the local level, and our enthusiasm level may never be higher. If we don't do this now, we may not be in a position to do it at some other point down the road.

It will test the true parsimony of Parsimonious Racing. The Nationals are in Lincoln, Nebraska. Driving a Miata out there is a pretty ludicrous idea. Driving two out there doesn't make much more sense. Towing out there seems to be the safe bet, which means we have to find something that will tow. This will probably mean replacing our Santa Fe support vehicle with something a little more substantial (a Toyota 4Runner appears likely). After that, there's buying or renting a trailer.

The most pressing piece of the puzzle is preparing the car we'll be taking to Nationals. Captain Slow would be a very good choice, since we have a lot of time behind its wheel and it's proven to be competitive. But the Ugly Duckling has its upside, too. Its drive train has almost 40,000 fewer miles than Slow's, and it doesn't have a roll bar, which is unnecessary weight up high in the car.

The Duckling has already had some fun parts thrown at it in preparation for this venture. Before the 2010 season ended we ordered up a set of custom-valved Bilstein coilovers from FatCat Motorsports, and they showed up in time to be installed on the car New Year's Day. We haven't had a chance to give them a serious test yet, since the weather has not been favorable and the car has its winter wheel/tire package on, but initial impressions are positive.

There are still plenty of items on the Duckling's to-do list. SCCA Street Touring Sports rules allow any intake, header, and exhaust as long as the car retains a catalytic converter in the stock location. Intakes are easy to buy and easy to mount, though I haven't decided which one we'll go with just yet. As far as exhaust, that'll come from Flyin' Miata and replace the entire system aft of the manifold. We can put in an aftermarket header but I haven't decided if that's a fix I want to tackle just yet.

We have a tire decision ahead of us as well. We can go cheap or not-so-cheap, again testing our parsimonious nature. The inexpensive route would be to put a set of 195/50/15 Toyo Proxes R1R tires on our RPF1 wheels. Those tires were on last year's Nationals-winning car, although they were on a set of 15x7.5 wheels (half an inch wider than what we have here). Word on the street is that the Hankook Ventus RS3-3 tires are the hot setup under most conditions, especially in the 225/45/15 size (225mm wide is the maximum allowed). These will certainly require 7.5" wide wheels, so we'll have to find a set of those as well. Fortunately, we can start the season on what we've used last year and perhaps as we approach the Dover Tour in early June we can have a better idea of what the must-have tire/wheel combination is so we can jump on that bandwagon.

Finally, the Duckling is ugly. It was ugly when we bought it and it hasn't improved a bit since. As a matter of fact, it's gotten worse. The paint is leaving the car like it's got some kind of allergy. We have plans to address this ourselves; it's a matter of waiting for the warmer weather to get here so we can start tackling the body and paintwork required to make the car, if nothing else, a single color.

As for the balance of our schedule, I imagine we'll still be participating in events put on by other clubs. I don't know if we'll run the full schedule put on by NCCBMWCCA, especially if they plan on holding events at Summit Point again. But I don't see not running with them when they come to Waldorf, and maybe even Bowie. We only ran a few events with Capital Driving Club last year and will probably do a handful again as our schedule allows. I can see picking and choosing from these and other smaller clubs' autocrosses, but probably not as many as we'll have our hands full with SCCA, the Tour, and Nationals. With a new wagon, maybe a trailer, and all the parts we have to put on the Duckling, we'll probably have to make sure we save our pennies where we can so we can justify spending what we'll spend to get through a fairly ambitious season.

Be sure to check in both here and on our Facebook page to see how our 2011 season goes. I think it's going to be a good one.

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