In 2017 I attempted to participate in both autocrossing and road racing in the same season.
That didn’t work out too well. The constant preparation for this event or another was enough to put my back/lumbar region out of commission for over a year. I tried chiropractic, physical therapy, lidocaine injections, heat, cold, icy-hot, TENS, massage, and finally acupuncture.
So in 2018 I concentrated on road racing, which involves a lot less physical work in a single day. I can prepare the race car and have everything ready to go a week ahead of time, as opposed to autocross, where a single day goes like this:
Load tires into car
Unload tires from car
Change all four tires
Drive four minutes
Change all four tires
Load tires into car
Unload tires from car
By August of 2018, my back was finally starting to feel better. But I hadn’t driven the Fiesta much at all since I bought my BMW i3 all-electric car. So it was just sitting around.
I tried selling it on Craigslist and in the classifieds at work, but the only people interested in the car were kids with no money to buy it. So I bit the bullet and sold it to CarMax in December 2018.
I’ll miss that car. It was good to me, even if it wasn’t all that good to my back. It never broke down, and it performed nearly flawlessly for over a hundred autocrosses and track events.
I hope it gets some love from its future owner. And I hope that future owner has a strong back.
