Pacific-fed air, an azure canopy, and hillocks sprayed with live oak frame Laguna Seca’s 2.2 miles of rolling macadam, as fun and famous a track as they get. We’d be content to navigate it on a tricycle, but fortunately the Skip Barber Racing School supplied us with a proper race car and professional instruction. We are here for a condensed, one-day preview of the school’s new MX-5 Cup three-day racing school.
The Skip Barber three-day competition course has long been the gold standard for aspiring racers and well-fed adventurers alike, and until now has utilized single-seat, open-wheel race cars. With the addition of this program, Skip Barber becomes the first and only program that straps students into the same cars used in a nationwide, professional racing series.
The school cars are, essentially, the same cars being raced in the SCCA Pro Racing SIRIUS Satellite Radio Mazda MX-5 Cup series. Using MX-5s also affords instructors a new tool: The ability to ride shotgun, a blessing for students and impetus for staff to take out extra life insurance.
Until this year, Barber had a relationship with Dodge, which provided Neons and Vipers as well as engines for the various single-seat race cars. The recent marriage with Mazda is a far more obvious choice, as Mazda supports grassroots racing at a level unparalleled by any other manufacturer, and churns out a selection of sprightly cars and engines.
Mazdaspeed Motorsports sells the package that Skip Barber and any motivated privateer uses to ready their MX-5 for competition. In go the racing seats and a very beefy eight-point roll cage with double side-impact crush bars that make for one of the safest-feeling racecars we’ve driven. The series-specific suspension includes Bilstein coil-over dampers and Eibach anti-roll bars. The factory-optional Torsen limited-slip differential is not optional on a racetrack, and is installed. The school cars use Bridgestone street tires rather than the Hankook R-compound tires mandated in the series, better suited to students and sponsor agreements alike. Engines receive a Mazdaspeed cold-air intake and the Barber techs cobbled together an exhaust system based on the light and loud Supertrapp mufflers. All this was done at the Barber facility, where brand new MX-5s were stripped, welded, and bolted into readiness (we hope the Barber mechanics’ beaters are sporting sweet new thrones).
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