My buddy Joe had a pretty bad leak on his 2001 VVT so we checked out the usual suspect: rear of valve cover and sure enough, the plastic cap was allowing a pretty good flow to seep out, find its way down the head and end up dripping from the tranny. This is pretty common with older Miata motors. The oil drain plug was dry so it was easy to see that wasn't it.
Pulled the Miata up on the ramps
Joe had just replaced his valve cover gasket but the leak was coming from the plastic cap that sits under the separate exhaust cam journal. Access to it requires removal of the valve cover
Problem part
Fixed
Just about done
Then a little diagnostics since we were curious about vacuum, timing and O2 sensors