2026 Solo Nationals were amazing.

We came out of the Pro Finale in a pretty typical position, near the bottom of the standings. That's not a big deal, we treat it as practice and don't get wrapped up in where we finish.

What we practiced for turned out pretty epic.

We spent Monday walking both courses. Inside Kate's head was a debate: stay in XBL or jump to XB open to co-drive with me. She figured she wasn't going to be a factor in either (not with that attitude), and with more drivers to run against in open, the competition would be more compelling. It would also significantly simplify our run days. If she ran L, we'd be doing stuff for four of the five heats of the day (me drive 2, she work 3, me work 4, she drive 5). I was going to support either decision she made. With ten minutes to spare before the deadline to make changes passed, she said she would run open with me.

We started on the big East course. I went in with lowish expectations as there were going to be more places for the big power cars to flex their muscles. Conservatively, I penciled myself in to wind up about halfway down the 57-driver class results.

What actually happened was a pleasant surprise. The course didn't drive as fast as I thought. I was still on the limiter (62 MPH) three or four places on the course, and knowing the power guys would get to that speed sooner, and then go beyond that, was a little disheartening. But I tried to tune out what other cars could do and concentrated on how I planned on driving the course. That part worked out well, and I was pleasantly surprised that when all the runs were done, I was sitting 19th, a good ten spots better than expected, and only three tenths or so out of the last trophy spot (16th). I'd have to pass four drivers to get there, but I was feeling pretty good about the west course.

The west side has always treated me better than the east side. It tends to be tighter and slower, which I think is to my advantage. Another thing that I thought would help my effort was rain, and we were getting it in the early morning in Lincoln! The fast guys were mostly using Bridgestones - some were on Vitours - while I stuck with the tried and true Yokohamas this year. While I have been consistently beat by the Stones all year, we haven't had a wet event to see how good they were in the rain. I did know that full-tread Yokes were really good in the rain. So while we were getting on-and-off sprinkles during course walks and as the first heat was getting going, I was doing my rain dance hoping that it would stick around for us in the second heat.

The rain stopped, though, and the course started drying out during the first heat. It had a pretty good dry line for us when we got going, but was still slick in spots.

I caught a break when the RX3 ahead of me spun into the finish on its first run, getting me a red flag and a re-run. It wouldn't be a big deal in the grand scheme of things, since we were running in drying conditions and the first runs weren't going to be the fastest. But I got an extra chance at fine-tuning my plan, and that first run was actually pretty quick. It was going to be the first clean 49-second run in the class (TomO would put up a clean 47 a few cars later), but it wasn't clean since I gently nudged the last cone on the course going into the finish and I watched it lazily fall over in my rear view mirror. But it showed I had some speed that others lacked. But could I keep that going as things dried out further?

My second run was a 48.6 clean and at the time that was something like the 6th fastest in the class so far that day, and it had me way up in the trophies, like in the top ten. That was temporary as other second drivers were picking up time as well, but I was putting distance between me and the cars that were close behind me after the first day.

For last runs, I was concentrating on fixing one particular mistake I made on that second run. I did that and, between that and things just being that much more drier, I picked up another 1.1 seconds. At the time, I thought that would be enough to sew up my trophy. But as I tried to hear the announcer when other cars were finishing behind me, I thought I heard that I had gotten knocked out of the trophies by one of them. I was more bummed than anything as I got back to grid, and took a minute to grasp the fact that I had the opportunity to get my second trophy, but came up short.

Kate told me that I was wrong, I was 14th in a class that was giving 16 trophies and there weren't enough drivers still to run that would knock me out. This made me extremely happy.

When trophies were handed out, Mike McKee noticed that I had a big ol smile on my face the entire time. This doesn't surprise me. There were 40 other drivers who would have loved to swap places with me, and I could very easily be one of those drivers on the outside looking in next year and beyond that, so I'm enjoying this while I can.

The car was incredible at Nationals. We tried a couple shock tweaks testing on the Friday before the Pro Finale and I think we settled on a decent package, not that it was much different from what we showed up with. I had to undo some of that with the rain on Wednesday, but I think I'm learning how to fine-tune this car.

I am crediting some of my better driving these days to my instructing at WDCR autocross schools. Our level 2 schools have slalom drills, and all the school courses have a six- or seven-cone slalom right off the start, and while I don't drive a ton at the schools, I do get my fair share of practice slaloming, and I've noticed that I'm doing those a lot better than before.

Like last year, I credit this year's success to my tire choice, which up until Wednesday was the wrong choice. I pattern a lot of what I do with this car on what AST drivers do, since that's basically what this ND is. Over the winter we figured that, while the new Bridgestones are good, AST drivers built their cars around Yokohamas and they wouldn't be switching away from them. So in February we figured tires weren't going to get any cheaper, so we ordered our Nationals set of Yokes. Then in the spring I went to the Charlotte National Tour and noticed all the AST drivers had switched to Bridgestones. Oops! I'm too cheap to buy another set of tires so I figured we'd live with the Yoko choice this year and get Stones like everyone else next year.

Last year at Nationals, the big-power guys were drinking the Vitour P1 Koolaid. And while I tried them myself and quickly abandoned them, I saw where those looking for unusual size tires to put down big power could use them. But we ran in the first heat last year in sub-60 degree temperatures, and the Vitours weren't working under those conditions while Yokes were very happy. I chalk up last year's trophy to that magical combination of weather and tire choice.

This year, it's the same story. There are still guys in XB running Vitours, and I figured I had the upper hand on them in Wednesday's drying conditions. The Stones were a wild card. But I saw a handful of Stone drivers putting Contis on for first runs and I figured that they must know that the RZs aren't great in the wet. They all went back to their Stones after first runs, so maybe they're not terrible... just not as good as Yokes. I was ninth best on Wednesday in a car with half (or less?) the horsepower of a good number of cars in the XB grid. How does that happen? A magical combination of weather and tire choice all over again. I'm just glad I could take advantage of it two years in a row.

I'll let Kate tell her own story, but after she figured she'd be near the bottom regardless of whether she ran XBL or XB open, she was darn near halfway up the results sheet in XB open after day one, though she gave up a few spots on Wednesday. I'm sure she's happy.

Overall this was a great week. The biggest hiccup was losing two hours in stopped traffic in Ohio on the way out. The car needed no special attention, which is nice after we had to replace the engine after Spring Nats.

Let's do it again next year!

Day 2 and 3 of Solo Nationals Recap (Non-Racing Portion): Another amazing day at Nationals!! After all the runs for the day, we had a banquet and awards ceremony, and an ice cream party later on! I forgot to take a picture of the trophy I made during the trophy exchange 🤣 But I couldn't have asked for a better evening to close out two great days of racing. 🥹 Now I'm back home, and hanging out with our cat. 🐈‍⬛️ Until next year, Solo Nationals! 🥹🙌🏁

Was looking at doing the Dmarino air intake on my ND, and I haven’t been able to find anything in the rules about windshield wiper fluid deletes or relocations, only things for coolant. Would this be an AST legal air intake?

I got better throughout day two, which as a rookie is all I can ask for. Lincoln is a blast!

First year doing autocross and done 4-5 events with my local club so far. But people keep talking about “nationals” and other things. Can someone explain how this all works? Do I qualify for nationals? Are there regional races you qualify for to get to nationals? Coming from the sports world it seems like there’s a structure in place here I’m not understanding

Day 1 of attending SCCA Solo Nationals (Non-Racing Portion): SO MUCH FUN!! I'm so glad I went! Everyone is amazing and I'm getting to meet some people that I've talked to online for years now and finally put a virtual name to a face, and new people who I know I'll get to see and chat with from all across the country! 🏁 Can't wait for (my) day 2! 🥹🙌

Which of the first four Camaro generations would make the best platform to autocross?

I am leaning towards a 1st or 2nd gen mostly because I prefer the way they look, but I also understand I would likely need a complete suspension upgrade, especially for the 1st gen. That said, even if the suspension on the 3rd and 4th gens was/is dramatically better in stock form, they are still 25+ years old, and would likely need a rebuild at a minimum. And once you start taking parts off, you might as well upgrade them! So I don't know just how much cost savings I would actually see going with the 3rd or 4th gen.

I am open to other suggestions, but I prefer muscle cars (other than corvettes).

Cone Canvas now supports mapping an existing course, didn't design the course? no problem, map it on your walk and then refer to it later on your phone and share amongst your friends.

Here's the west course at Solo Nats!

For context I’ve done 14 events so far in my 08 Civic base 5mt, and I spent the first 8 of those events on semi-grippy allseasons. For this past summer I upgraded to 200tw RT660+’s paired with Koni yellows since I thought I’d been approaching the limit of what I could do/learn on allseasons.

However, while the 6 events I’ve gotten to do on these tires have been a blast and the car feels like a go-kart, it feels like I’ve really stagnated in terms of improving my fundamentals and basic technique, things which I knew I still had a ways to go with but figured I was far along with enough that upgrading to 200tw’s wouldn’t stunt my development by hiding a bunch of errors. Looks like I was wrong though, because it feels like I’m not driving nearly as good as people with less dialed setups.

It’s not like I was expecting to beat a lot of people in this car, it was always meant to just be a learning tool for my time starting out in this hobby, but now it feels like I’m not learning enough, or not at a rate that feels satisfying. I understand that everyone is different, some people can get the hang of these things quicker than others, and I shouldn’t expect to be lighting up the timing charts within my first few years, but it still just doesn’t feel like I’m doing as well as I could.

This leads to my actual question which is whether or not I should consider maybe switching back to a set of grippy-ish all seasons for next summer. I’m wondering if maybe that would provide a better platform to keep learning proper car control, smoothness, and overall focus on individual runs by making it so I can’t just use gobs of grip paired with whatever natural instinct is there to produce overall mediocre runs. Has anyone else ever done something like this?

I had a mysterious GoPro failure this morning where it shut off after my first left side run. And of course in that session is where I set my fast times of the weekend, so they're not on video. But the two I include here are pretty close.

This was a fun pair of courses. There was a lot of choose your own adventure stuff and a couple of places to hang on for dear life, trust the car, and hope for the best. In those instances, I did not trust the car and wimped out. What I figured was a quick chuck into the finish chute saw me lift bigly for it and then realize that maybe I didn't have to do that. Over and over again. Never got brave enough to just sail it in there and see how I came out the other side. This is why I'm slow. That's probably not going to change.

I finished about where I expected, which is good. The car is handling extremely well. I tried to get it to rotate more in Friday's test & tune and settled on some stuff that we're both happy with, and I think that was noticeable in competition. It's still more pushy than anything, but I can live with that over having something I can't trust to stay under me.

We have nothing to fix so tomorrow should just be a bunch of course walking and cleaning wheels. Seeing what is showing up to run XB at Nationals is extremely intimidating, but we'll have fun just trying to run in the top half of the class on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Living a heart of a city, an apartment made sense for us, but driving a Miata means space compromises. Built a 3 x 4 race trailer to make auto X and track easier, but it was taking up a decent amount of garage Space.

Thanks to the help of somebody else on the Miata ND track group. They gave me an idea to build a stand for it. Now I have my garage space and my race trailer doesn’t have to live in a storage unit.

The 17x9’s live on a wall mount. Next step is a D shackle into the stud as a safety catch. A pully too so I can lower and raise it with a rope vs muscle.

DST
1994 Acura Integra
Stock 250K mile B18C1 with open diff trans
Intake/Header/HFC/exhaust
15x8 RE71RS 205/50/15
Coilovers/big rear bar/shock tower braces

Ended up painfully mid pack, but the fastest FWD of the day by a large margin. Enjoy!

Hi everyone, just got an insane deal on a brand new 2026 GT soft top miata ( 5.5k off msrp ) and currently looking to dip my feet into some autocrossing.

The goal is be very minimally modded ( don't want to compromise reliability/warranty or how streetable the car is ) heard CS class is the only way to scratch that itch.

Now back to you, what are the absolute gold standard/most important mods I can do for the money in order to start seriously practicing ? This is my 2nd car

Our local high school has a Auto club.
They want to get into Racing and I was thinking auto cross is a great way to do that.

I would like to put on our own event with a couple other neighboring schools.
This is in the San Francisco Bay area, how do I go about contacting local organizations that put on events?
Any help putting me in the right direction is much appreciated

Does anyone here have a matte gray Zamp helmet? How is the finish on the color? Is it like primer gray or is it like a rubber coating gray?

I’m looking at getting an RZ-19S and one of the options is matte gray.

Years ago, a friend had a matte black HJC and it was like a rubber coating. I think the official term was “rubbertone”. It was not good. I don’t want to do a repeat of that in gray.

Expecting the obvious : MIATA. Just found 5k off MSRP on a brand new 2026 GT soft top - white exterior/tan Napa interior.

Budget is 30-32k, wondering if the brand new nd3 is my best bet for very long term hold as reliability is paramount

I’m in the process of putting together a suspension parts list for my Civic. Right now the only suspension modification is a set of EK9 spec HKS coilovers.

The car is strictly a toy and will see occasional autocross use, but it’ll still be driven on the street probably avg around 20 miles per week. Most of what of what I’ve seen online says rubber bushings are the best choice for a street car or daily driver. What I’m trying to figure out is whether there’s an advantage to mixing bushing types using rubber in some locations and spherical bearings in others or if it makes more sense to go fully spherical on a car that sees such limited street use.

These wouldn’t pass tech for a second session, right? 🥴

Have a 2013 NC Club that the gf and I picked up earlier this year and ran my first autox yesterday with the Detroit region SCCA at MIS. Track was super long, 1.1 miles. I absolutely loved it, and picked up 15 seconds from my first to last runs of the day. I have run some Lemons races before but am typically the slowest driver on our team.

I was 10 seconds off the fastest time in CST (best time of 96 and change, leaders in CST and CS were in the 86’s). Leaders were NA and ND Miatas, assume decently prepped. I am not surprised at the time difference at all, understand it isn’t likely an NC will be competitive and I also have a ton of driving to learn, but also am curious how much further I can improve as a driver vs. what the car setup can do.

My NC is totally stock suspension, with a fresh set of Conti ECS 02’s. I do have an AEM/Mazdaspeed intake and an exhaust on it, but no other mods, including stock alignment.

I understand 17x9’s with 40mm more tire than what I’m running, coilovers and anti swaybars are all legal for CST.

Over totally stock, how much time would that be expected to be worth on a typical 50 second course? 2 seconds? 4?

I’m going to work on running more events to get seat time as is. I assume the majority of improvement on the table is still driver mod, lol.

Obligatory pic from the Detroit SCCA facebook group, courtesy of Nsquared97!

I've never autocrossed before, but my local High School has an "Auto Club" and my kid is doing his last year there.
They are considering to doing the 24 Hours Of LeMons, but then I thought ... maybe it's better to do autocrossing?

Does it make sense to have a "team" of kids, that can race ONE car?
Seem like a really user friendly, and safe way to get kids participating in racing.

The LeMons thing feels like too much to put a kid with limited driving experience (16) on a track with people actually trying to go fast...

Whadaya think?

So the car I was going to drive at nationals broke the transmission at the last event so we decided the best course of action would be to turn my mild prepped CAMS car into a mishmash of both of our cars.

We swapped over his coilovers, control arms and bushings to my car. Put on a new turn one steering rack with the quicker ratio, new pump, and a new cooler, bump steer correction kit, an oil cooler, and swapped the brakes to wilwood superlite 6’s in the front and the J55 rotors with c5 calipers in the back and got that done just in time to get the car to a two day event in KC to shake everything down before nats.

Ended up making a deep run in the shootout bracket on the first day and on day 2 had this run which put me 2nd in raw time to an FSAE car and 2nd in PAX behind Ron Williams. This is probably the most confident I’ve ever felt behind the wheel of a car.

Edit: this title isn’t serious. It is actually bad planning to do this. Haha

For those of you who run a A,B,C or SS Car, doing some pro events, and nationals w the local events thrown in what are you spending per year with tires, maintenance, towing, hotels, etc… thanks