MAZDASPEED MOTORSPORTS DEVELOPMENT

Who have been the biggest contributors over the last twenty years to developing American open-wheel and road racing talent? Without doubt, it’s the Skip Barber Racing School and Series, Jeremy Shaw’s Team USA highlighted by this year’s spectacular scholarship winners Josef Newgarden and Conor Daly, and Mazda’s excellent Mazdaspeed Driver Development Ladder working in company with the Skip Barber group.

Last month I covered Newgarden and Daly’s recent Team USA adventure in the UK and their plans for next season. This week I’m going to take a look at Mazda’s young driver development program which deserves a round of applause because no other auto manufacturer provides so much help to aspiring young American racers.

Each year Mazdaspeed’s program helps five young drivers move up by paying for the next step in their careers. This year’s beneficiaries were 2007 Star Mazda Champion Dane Cameron who raced in this year’s Atlantic series; 2007 Skip Barber Champion Joel Miller who competed in the Star Mazda series; Connor De Phillippe, the 15-year old winner of Mazdaspeed’s karting shoot-out who raced in the Barber Series; Jason Saini, the ‘07 Playboy MX-5 Champion who ran this year’s Speed World Challenge; and Brad Rampelberg, the ‘07 SCCA Spec Miata Champion who won the MX-5 shoot-out to earn a season in the Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup.

Three of this year’s five 2009 Mazdaspeed scholarship winners have been determined. John Edwards won this year’s Star Mazda championship and moves up to Atlantic next year; Conor Daly won the BF Goodrich/Skip Barber National Championship presented by Mazda and will race in next year’s Star Mazda series; and Eric Foss moves up to the Speed World Challenge after winning this year’s Playboy MX-5 championship.

On Tuesday of this week (December 9) the MX-5 Cup shoot-out takes place at Buttonwillow Raceway to determine the winner of a season of Playboy MX-5 racing. And Mazdaspeed’s Karting shoot-out takes place at the end of the month (December 27-29) to select the winner of a year of sponsorship to compete in the BF Goodrich/Skip Barber National series.

Three years ago Mazda reached a wide-ranging agreement with Skip Barber Racing to supply the school with Mazda sedans and sports cars as well as engines for the Barber racing series. The Barber school uses Mazda sedans and MX-5 sports cars for instruction at five schools across the country and they have become even more popular than the traditional open-wheel school. The Skip Barber Race Series comprises four regional amateur series and an entry level pro series called the BFGoodrich/Skip Barber National Championship presented by Mazda, which awards a $350,000 champion’s bonus. New to the whole package this year was the Skip Barber Mazdaspeed Challenge, multiple championships using identically prepared MX-5 Miata race cars.

Robert Davis is Mazda North America’s senior vice-president of product development and quality. Davis has been with Mazda for eighteen years and has occupied his current position since 2005. Davis is also an enthusiastic amateur racer, competing regularly aboard a Mazda RX-8 in NASA club races.

“I’ve been a racer since the early nineties and participated in the Mazda program way before I became responsible for it,” Davis remarked. “We’re proud of what we’ve established. Our strategy has always been a bottom-up strategy that focuses on taking care of our customers that are racers, or soloists, or enthusiasts, rather than a top-down strategy like Toyota in NASCAR or Formula 1, which is kind of a carpet-bombing technique.

To read the rest of this column go to gordonkirby.com and click on ‘The Way It Is‘