Global MX-5 Cup car test drives at Atlanta Motorsports Park!
The IMSA event at Circuit of the Americas was this past weekend, and it was a very busy weekend for sure, with both the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge and Tudor United SportsCar series. The end results of the weekend, for me personally, didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but I certainly had a lot of fun along the way.
The opportunity to drive again with Freedom Autosport and Britt Casey, Jr., after all the success we’ve had this season, was exciting. On the SpeedSource Mazda side, we had a great week, although the ultimate results didn’t really show it. We made incredible progress with our Mazda SKYACTIV prototype throughout the event.
COTA is one of the world-class tracks we visit, and the circuit itself is very challenging because you have high-speed straights, technical corners and many complex corners that lead into each other. It’s an engineering challenge to make a car work really well there, but we were able to accomplish just that.
Ashton Harrison won her first Spec Miata race in the AMP Spec Miata Challenge, which shared staggered track time with the GMX5 test sessions. She finished 1st of the 13-car field on Sunday for Race1! I’ll be working with her again in a few short weeks for the SCCA SE Championships at Roebling Road.
I had a lot of exciting racing in the first hour of the Tudor race before a small issue sidelined us from finishing. I’m proud of how far we got during the race – there was a lot of intensity in the first hour – and the results truly don’t reflect how the rest of our week went.
On Sunday I went to Atlanta Motorsports Park for a Global MX-5 Cup test day for prospective series competitors – a lot of the participants are current MX-5 Cup racers. It was a beautiful day at an exciting track that has a lot of elevation, and its tight, nimble layout suited the car very well. The drivers were experiencing the car for the first time, and it was refreshing to hear their feedback about how impressive the new platform is and how well refined some of the items are, like handling, braking and even torque.
The car ran for over six hours and did great, and we had a lot of happy drivers who are excited about the upcoming season. The full package specs, including pricing, will be announced soon.
Now I’m off to Daytona for the SCCA Runoffs, which is always an exciting week!