Dave , Car Guy is also Dave, MX-5 Cup Guy

It is inevitable, I suppose.  If one is a car enthusiast, regardless of whether you're into high-end brands or home-built racers, the legend of the Mazda MX-5 as a driver's car and a great track weapon eventually filter into your brain. 

Inevitable outcome: I bought my first MX-5.

In my case, this is not a street car (in fact, has no VIN). It is a factory MX5 Cup car. I bought it used from Flis Performance in Florida, after getting refurbished. This is chassis 214 from the factory. It won the 2021 MX-5 Cup championship, driven by Gresham Wagner. 

Although it's now painted white, I am planning on returning it to its championship-winning livery, minus the Spark Performance logos. I will be racing it on the West Coast, primarily in private group of 10 racers with new Cup cars, part of the Turn 2 Club I belong to. We are coached and directed by Aaron Jeansonne, who is also being partially sponsored by the Turn 2 club the year. Aaron is in a close battle for the championship lead of the IMSA Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup series.

I'll still be racing my Datsun 510 in the historic CSRG and SVRA groups, but hopefully doing both will make me better in each!

My car was refurbished by Flis Performance with new seat, harness, padding, paint, etc. Spark Performance has replaced and refurbished all the mechanicals recently as well. Charlie Hayes Racing (CHR) took my car in and made the finishing touches. The guys at CHR, led strongly by Charlie, are an amazing resource and they are the ones supporting our group, prepping and maintaining the cars, doing transport, etc. I can't say enough good things about this crew!

I tried an MX-5 out a few months back, at the suggestion of my friend Rick (with whom I also race Datsun 510s), and I was hooked. Thanks, Rick! The sequential transmission in the Cup car is fantastic. Left foot braking possible, with no clutch used on shifts. Bang, bang! The car is a lot like my 510, handling wise, but with more precise steering and far better brakes! Playful at the limit without being scary. A car you can really go hard in and it rewards you when your inputs are correct. 

The Turn 2 Club is a group of about 35 drivers that are active in racing and other track activities. We do about 25 track days together at Sonoma Raceway (Sears Point), Laguna Seca, and Thunderhill.  About 9 of our members have now purchased these MX-5 Cup cars and we are doing racing/driving development together and creating our own small race series. Many of our guys also race in Formula 3, IMSA, Porsche Sprint Challenge, Lamborghini Super Trofeo, and historic racing. As we do our own thing with these great race cars, we are blessed to have Aaron Jeansonne as our great coach and mentor. We fully expect him to win the MX-5 Cup championship this year.

It's a sequential shifter, so I'm going to try to unlearn 30+ years of heel-toe downshifting habit because the straight cut gears allow left foot braking and no-clutch shifting. We shall see how that goes. Old dog, new trick, as they say. I'm a pretty dang old dog, so new tricks are not my specialty. But I keep trying! By the way, to understand how these cars are prepared by Flis Performance for the rigors of the MX-5 Cup series, check out this video:

When I then had my first test day in the car, I loved it. We were at Sonoma Raceway with the Turn 2 drivers club. We had six of us testing in MX5s, plus other club members out in a variety of street cars, Cup cars, and formula cars. The car is easy to drive. It recovers well if you have fast hands and a feel for using the throttle to maintain stability. Worst thing to do on this car is to be coasting off throttle through a hard turn. The work I need to do is to get to full throttle a bit earlier in several turns. It’s subtle differences that help.

The transmission is an absolute hoot. Once you use the clutch to come out of pit lane from a start in 1st gear, you no longer use it. Upshifts are just hard pulls backward on the solid sequential shifter knob, which feels perfectly sized for the job. The car rev-matches on downshifts, so going into a corner from 4th to 1st while braking hard is a delight. “Bang, bang, bang!” There is a very mechanical feel to those straight cut gears that is accompanied by a very subtle electronic addition of the perfect rev match you hear. Plus a pop from the exhaust. Driving behind one, you will see the flames out the exhaust on the downshift. First gear is tall, goes to 60 mph at 7200 rpm.

The brakes are solid and it takes a lot to induce ABS. The brake zones aren’t super hard at Sonoma, except turns 7 and 11. The car turns in wonderfully and has so much mechanical grip that you find yourself growing in confidence with each lap. I never found myself sending the rear end out on corner exit, as long as i was unwinding my hands after apex. The only times I got squirrelly was on an aggressive brake release or over top of a hill as the car hit light, if I hit brakes without straight hands. 

The last couple of days I was at the track again testing the car. My new livery matching the old one from the championship is partly completed! We had 7 of us out in MX-5s and did a bunch of exercises and sessions to improve brake points, passing strategies, and throttle inputs.  Below is a video of a couple laps whereI got my times down to where I'm happy for now. Note this is the Sonoma Configuration with the added turn 9 "bus-stop / kink" that slows you down before Turn 10, as the Indy cars use. It makes the track times about 4 seconds slower than the standard track configuration, as it removes the very high speed normal Turn 10.

Another Day in September with some additional practice. Down to 1:53 at Sonoma. I need to find a couple  more seconds.