June’s autocross was especially tight, and with my level of experience, it was pretty challenging. My only competition in A Stock was my friend Yi Wen and his BMW Z3 2.3. He’s pretty new to his car and has only had it for about 2-3 months. The tight confines of this track were not very well suited to both of our cars (and drivers).  My planned improvement for June was new rear tires.  This dramatically increased the inherent understeer of the MR-2.  I had the rear of the car really planted (too well actually), but at least there was no chance of a spin. My first run was good for a 72.990, the second run I pushed too hard and missed a gate, DNF. The third and fourth runs were 72.378 and 71.794. Except for the missed gate, all my runs were clean with no cones hit and no spins, and just good enough to beat the Z3 for first place in A Stock. Overall I placed 30^th out of 52 drivers.

July 11th, 1999

July’s autocross was a deceiving course. When I walked the track, I first thought it was an open, fast track. Wrong! The straight-aways were not as fast as they looked, and the three slaloms really rewarded a car that could change directions quickly. My competition in A stock consisted of two experienced drivers in two Porsches; a 911 running DOT racing tires and a Boxter. For July’s improvement I installed "crash bolts" to the front suspension to increase negative camber to 1.5 degrees. Even with these changes I didn’t have a chance! (I went to the race with my O2 sensor broken, if it was working, I would have beaten that Boxster…yeah right!) Just like June, my times improved slowly. My first run was a slow 88.634, on my second run I had a big spin going into a sharp right turn. My mistake was trying to carry too much speed while under braking, a big no-no in a MR-2. You really need to finish all your braking in a straight line or else you’ll spin and end up with a 90.222. The final two runs were an uneventful 86.204 and 85.831. The 911 did a best of 81.052, the Boxter 84.988. Overall I was 19^th out of 43 drivers. Franceen raced in this autocross, during the course of her four runs she got a best of 93.931 good for 38^th overall.