[Non-MQB Autocross] June VMSC Autocross at VMP
Don’t threaten me with a good time…
Last year I had a lot of fun co-driving a friend’s Alltrack — basically the longer AWD version of my own GTI. It was fun but familiar because the similarities made the differences easy to isolate. The most recent event was a little different. A friend of mine (Cash) asked if I'd be interested in co-driving his Miata at a Virginia Motor Sports Club event, and I figured why not. I haven't autocrossed my own car since September of 2025, and frankly the opportunity to drive something a little different was tempting.
Cash’s 1990 Miata - build for road course work, so gets hit over the head with a poor PAX factor due to being in X-Prepared
The Car
By “unique” I mean that Cash’s 1990 Miata is powered by a 2.0L Ecoboost from a 2013 Ford Escape. He shoe-horned it into the engine bay with JEMSport parts plus a bit of fabrication. As you can see, it also has a notable aero package.
Above: Soccer mom SUV power under hood
The main talking points on the car:
Engine: 2013 Ford Escape 2.0L Ecoboost using JEMSport swap components
Transmission: ZF-5 from an E36 M3
Suspension: 949 Racing coilovers
1000lb/in front springs
500lb/in rear springs
Brakes: Wilwoods with MK60 ABS
Tires: 245/40R15 Nankang CR-S V2s on 15x10-inch wide wheels
Differential: Thunderbird rear LSD
Aero: DIY front splitter, 9 Lives Racing rear wing, Racelouvers hood vents
Roll cage: Piper Motorsports (same as what saved another friend’s ass back in March)
The car is primarily built for track use where the aero is pretty fundamental to how it was set up. At autocross speeds the spring rates are less than optimal.
Cash has only been at this for a few years, but he runs a ton of events — both track and autocross — and puts in time on a simulator on top of that. He’s quick.
The real reason I’m co-driving it
The reason he wanted a co-driver for this event was that he needed to shake the car down for autocross and the CR-S V2s need heat to come alive. In a car this light, short autocross runs don't generate nearly enough to keep them in their happy place. Running two drivers back-to-back means more heat in the rubber. I was invited to be the tire warmer. He did not have very much time on the new coilovers (just VIR last month). He hadn’t spent much of any time fiddling with them, so if I could provide input, that could be cool too.
The Event
It was already 85°F at 10am with a forecasted high near 95°F. There was a 20% chance of rain in the forecast later in the afternoon, but there was already a 100% chance of walking around in balls soup before the drivers meeting even started.
Yep. There’s cones out there.
Cash and I walked the course together once before the event. It was fast — with a few hairpin-type turns scattered throughout. My main pre-run concern was the 3-2 downshift in a couple of spots where it looked unavoidable. In an unfamiliar car with an unfamiliar gearbox, I just didn’t want to money shift it.
We were driving 2nd heat and working 3rd, which kinda sucked from a “I want to get out of here” perspective, but was probably ideal from a competitive standpoint. The first heat cleans the marbles and debris off the racing line; the later heats tend to get greasy as rubber builds up. Heat 2 is often the sweet spot — cleaned off but not yet cooked. Whether that would hold true today remained to be seen.
The first heat was spent with canopy, shade, and a Wawa hoagie. Could be worse.
The Runs
Gridded up for the start of heat 2
Tires were set to 25psi cold to start. I went out first, as planned.
Getting into a caged, narrow-bucket-seated, tiny Miata felt like a reverse birth. I'm not sure how else to describe it. Orienting the harness correctly while folded into that cockpit was genuinely the most stressful part of the entire day. I also immediately found out it had no power steering - I wasn’t 100% sure how well that’d play as I’m currently nursing a rotator cuff injury as well. Fortunately it turned out to not really be an issue.
I’ve driven some cool stuff before, but it has been a solid 8ish years since driving anything like this.
The car is, in a word, raw. On “cold” tires the grip level was predictably low. The back end rotated easily but predictably under throttle. The front end pushed a little during the first half of the first run. The rear never really got a whole lot better until the very end. The lot is bumpy - and the suspension bounced like crazy. Driving the car was a bit of a sensory overload as you feel a LOT of different things that you normally don’t get in an MQB car.
I would also like to note that while getting out of the car after my first run, I fell backwards and landed flat on my back. My head hit the ground. Fortunately I still had my helmet on at the time, which is the only reason this is an amusing anecdote rather than a much worse story. Definitely disorienting.
Over the next few runs I had the entry and exit routine mostly figured out and was getting more comfortable with the car itself. My second run — still early in the day — turned out to be my fastest at a 55.405, purely because it was the only clean run I had. The later runs I started just trying different things with the car and was running about the same mid-55s pace - if I hadn’t coned each away. My final run was a 54.6 but again… +1 cone making the final official time a 56.688.
Cash, while consistently much faster in the 52-53 sec range, tagged at least one cone on every single run, so ultimately his 4th run came in at a 52.913 +1 (so officially a 54.913) — still about half a second quicker than my best with the cone penalty factored in. His camera was overheating so unfortunately have no runs of his for comparison.
I’m usually hopping into people’s cars to help them, so it was nice to get out of my comfort zone in a different car and get humbled a bit. He has a LOT of seat time in this car and it definitely shows. It was just a shame that he couldn’t have cleaned up one of his runs. Without the cone he could’ve had 2nd raw time of the day (behind a Porsche GT3 driven by a Nationals level driver).
How the Car Felt
The biggest issue throughout the day was the spring rates. The 1000lb setup makes perfect sense on a track where the aero is fully loaded and high-speed cornering loads are working with the suspension rather than against it. At autocross speeds, the car was hopping and porpoising through the bumpy sections — of which there were many on this course — and the low-speed corners exposed just how little compliance there was for that kind of surface. It honestly felt a bit like a boat trying to go on plane in rough water coming out of one of the hairpins. I found that if I were more patient with the throttle this was less dramatic.
Seen from outside the car it is bouncing and bobbling all over the place - we stiffened the shocks after this
Cash fiddled with the shock adjusters between runs and it improved marginally, but it was hard to fully dial in while hot-swapping drivers with almost no time between runs. I think him running as a single driver (with tire blankets) and having time between runs would be more beneficial to car development.
The other glaring issue was the brakes. At least to ME it felt like the car immediately started pushing under braking. I’ve driven Miatas that felt great under braking; but this had a very similar (not so great) feeling to the Alltrack I drove, and I suspect both could have the same root cause: getting deep into the bump stops under braking.
Results
Being an XP car definitely not purpose-built for XP… it gets hit over the head pretty hard in PAX. My driving definitely sucked too so no excuses there.
The final results were:
Myself:
2/2 in XP
12/69 in Raw
44/69 in PAX
Cash:
1/2 in XP
6/69 in Raw
41/69 in PAX
While on paper I lost to Cash by “only” 0.492 sec, I know that if he were able to clean things up I’d be WAY off by about 2.5 sec. Kinda sucks but I think with some more time behind the wheel I could give Cash a run for his money.
Post-Event Debrief
Cash and I grabbed food at a Mexican restaurant after the event to talk through the day, which is honestly one of the better parts of going to these things. We had a proper debrief on what the car needs.
My main suggestion was to check bump stop engagement under hard braking combined with turning. If the suspension is hitting the bump stops in that scenario, the effective spring rate goes toward infinity right at the moment you want the car to be compliant and rotate — which would explain the braking understeer perfectly. Beyond that, more experimentation with the shock settings is probably the next logical step.
Overall it was a genuinely fun day, even if it wasn't entirely my cup of tea. The car is exciting and more visceral in a way that the GTI isn’t, and I left with a lot of respect for what Cash has built and how quickly he's developed as a driver. That said, I found myself missing the GTI's trail braking ability more than once out there — I think it could've been pretty competitive on that course with the right tire.
Parting Thoughts
All in all, I had a good time. It was nice going to an event to just kind of have fun. It was also neat driving something different… Every time I get the opportunity to drive something fun/cool that’s RWD I sort of wonder if I’m going to dislike the GTI afterwards… but every time I still come away with a stupid draw towards wrong wheel drive hatchbacks like an idiot moth to a flame.
I DID learn that I absolutely zero desire for a tiny caged car, and when the time comes in the GTI to cage it… having door bars that allow a bit easier ingress/egress will be a pretty high priority.
