What I Learned At MX-5 Driving School
Turn 8 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the premier road race track in the U.S., is fed by the Rahal Straight, which kinks up a lush green hillside to present a spectacular view across Monterey and Carmel to the ocean. As gorgeous as the scenery is, this is the worst spot on the track for distraction, because Turn 8 dumps into the infamous Corkscrew, a downhill left followed by an immediate, and fast, right that is virtually invisible from the turn-in point. Inexperienced drivers must align the nose of the car with an imposing oak tree on the distant side of Turn 9, and marked with a bright orange cone for the Skip Barber MX-5 Cup racing school, to successfully negotiate the Corkscrew.
Somehow, I missed that little detail during the morning classroom instruction and pre-lunch lead-and-follow sessions, and on my first-ever attempt to solo the infamous Corkscrew relied on blind faith, chucking the almost new Mazda Miata MX-5 left and saying a quick prayer. This method, not taught by the capable instructors at the Skip Barber school, didn't work. Instead of gracefully descending the hill and rocketing out of Turn 8A, I transformed the race-prepped MX-5 Cup car into an off-roader, bounding down the hill just to the left of the pavement, scraping the bottom of the car in the dirt and gravel, and plowing right into a giant orange cone serving as an apex marker. The cone's base wedged itself into the MX-5's radiator, which began spewing coolant all over the track. I knew the cone was stuck under the car through Turn 9, where it thumped out from under the rear of the Miata and tumbled across the blacktop, but I didn't realize that my car was disgorging fluids and rapidly losing its mojo until I came to a stop in the pits and heard the Skip Barber guys screaming: "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
So, lesson number one: Don't think you know the intricacies of a race track just because you've raced it on your PlayStation more times than you can count. Lesson number two: The new MX-5 makes for a terrific and relatively inexpensive racer that you can build yourself using Mazdaspeed parts for about $35,000. Lesson number three: Skip Barber is the place to go to learn how to extract maximum performance from the MX-5 Cup car.
Mazda has entered a multi-year agreement to supply the Skip Barber organization with support and driving school cars in the hopes that Skip Barber will feed more aspiring drivers into the Mazda motorsports funnel. This aligns perfectly with Mazda's grass-roots motorsports effort: Half of the Sports Car Club of America's production class club racers are driving Mazda products on any given weekend, and many of those cars are Miatas.
This little factoid makes the new-for-2007 Mazda MX-5 Cup school that much more important to Mazda's motorsports activities. Students spend three days learning how to maximize the Miata's performance potential in almost exactly the same cars that are competing in the SCCA Pro Racing Sirius Satellite Radio MX-5 Cup professional series. The tires and suspension settings on the school cars are little different from what gets raced, but that's about it.
Participants in the three-day MX-5 Cup racing school pay anywhere from $2,995 to $4,295 depending on the track where the school is taught, and at this writing 37 classes are scheduled through December of 2008 on tracks located around the country. I was fortunate enough to take a condensed single-day course at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca near Monterey, Calif., to get a sense of what students learn about driving 200-hp, 2,600-lb., race-prepped chick cars.
Day One starts, like each of the three days, with a classroom chalk talk to discuss the day's activities. Then, students and instructors hit the track to work on slalom, braking, and downshifting techniques. On Day Two things get more interesting as students learn advanced braking techniques and take to the main track for high-speed laps. Day Three builds on improving skills with racing techniques including drafting, passing, race starts, and racing in the rain. Once you've completed the three-day course, Skip Barber offers a one-day school that includes 100 miles of lapping the track to hone the skills you've learned. And if the cost of the three-day school is too steep, for less than $1,500 aspiring racers can take a one-day combo school that provides a little taste of everything, except for fries and a Coke.
Despite my utterly pathetic and disastrous driving on my first solo lap of Laguna Seca, the Skip Barber guys kindly put me in a different car after I'd rolled into the pits leaking coolant, and sent me on my way. Not long after heading back onto the track, I got flagged for pushing too hard through Turn Three, which is a little more than a 90-degree, high-speed turn, nearly putting the left wheels into the dirt. Adding further insult to injury, I couldn't shake the younger guys from Road & Track and Motor Trend on the autocross course or the main track, which reminded me that no matter how good I think I am, there's always someone better. And lighter.
Despite major hits to my ego, the MX-5 Cup racing school was a blast, I learned plenty, and now driving my Mazdaspeed Miata is more rewarding than ever. I highly recommend a Skip Barber course.
