The race series composed entirely of tiny roadsters is the 900-pound gorilla of club racing in America. How'd that happen, and why?
When the U.S. economy took an extended pit stop in 2008, many thought that it would be the end of large-scale amateur road racing in this country. The two major sanctioning bodies—the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and the National Auto Sport Association (NASA)—faced the twin threats of skyrocketing operating costs and dwindling entry lists. What arguably saved them was a new and popular form of racing that didn't exist 10 years prior: a spec series based around a set of affordable modifications to the Mazda MX-5 Miata.
Today, Spec Miata is the most popular club-racing class in the country and the largest single class within NASA. Nearly one in six amateur race entries on any given weekend is a first- or second-generation Mazda Miata, and more than 3000 Spec Miata conversion kits have been sold to date. Just as the MG TC was the foundation of amateur racing in the postwar era, its modern, Japanese successor has been the savior of amateur racing today, partly because the buy-in is only about 10 grand. It all seems logical now, but without a few fanatic evangelists, early involvement from Mazda, and some help from airbag-replacement regulations, Spec Miata might not have developed. Of course, not everybody who was there at the beginning agrees on the story.
WHO INVENTED SPEC MIATA?
Bob Dowie, Chairman, SCCA Club Racing Board, 2001–2011: I've always said that if you want to start a fight, a great way to do it would be to ask, "Who invented Spec Miata?" But I think we've agreed that it was Shannon McMasters and David delGenio.
Shannon McMasters, Co-creator, Spec Miata: I was a rotary guy from way back. In 1997, I was building cars for the Spec RX-7 class. Mazda wasn't making any money on Spec RX-7 because the cars were at least 10 years old. Meanwhile, there were all these Showroom Stock Miatas that were about to become too old to race in that class.
Robert Davis, Senior VP, U.S. Operations, Mazda: We always knew the car would be raced. In fact, many of the early Miatas were donated to racers for SCCA club racing.
Jim Daniels, Founder, Mazdaracers.com and Pro Spec Miata: We all used to take our old Showroom Stock cars, pull the cages, fix the dents, put the airbags back in, and resell them to the dealers. But then it became a crime to put airbags back in a car without notifying the next buyer, and Mazda didn't want us doing that anymore. So you had race cars with no purpose.
BY RACERS, FOR RACERS
McMasters: I had an idea. I wrote some basic rules, built four "Spec Racer Miatas," and took them around the country. We'd enter them in another SCCA class as a demonstration.
Daniels: The Miata just killed everybody in SCCA Showroom Stock racing. But at some point, the car got too old for Showroom Stock and moved to the Production class. And the old guys who were racing the Production classes didn't want those ex-Showroom Stock Miatas to come in and spoil their party, you know? 'Cause they had three guys show up for a race and two of them didn't finish. They didn't want to add 50 Miatas on top of that.
At the SCCA Runoffs in 2000, Robert Davis and Steve Sanders asked me to start promoting the series.
McMasters: The Spec Miata kit was stuff they already had on the shelf for other race series. We didn't change much. Looking back, I wish we'd put stiffer springs in, but we used what we had.
Davis: I loved the idea, because Spec Miata was a class created by racers for racers.
Daniels: They sold over 800 kits before the SCCA even started considering letting the Spec Miata have a national championship. Spec Miata took off, but each region had a different idea of how to implement it.
Dowie: Guys in New England were treating them like Showroom Stock cars. The Texas racers had custom intakes.
McMasters: Everybody wanted different tires.
MONEY AND MARKETING
Daniels: I decided to pay people to settle on a spec, so I founded Pro Spec Miata. We went around the country holding races. There was cash on the line, but you had to run to our spec, not whatever your own region was doing.
McMasters: I hated that name, "Spec Miata." At the time, the Miata had a reputation as a girl's car. I wanted "Spec Racer Miata." That earned us a cease and desist letter from the SCCA, which owned the trademark "Spec Racer." But by the time they started trying to get a national championship, I'd dropped out. There wasn't anything I could improve, the spec was settled, and I wanted a new challenge.
Jeremy Croiset, Director of Business Development, NASA: In 1999, we believed the timing was right and went ahead with the NASA Spec Miata class. We held the first-ever Spec Miata race in February 2000 in the NASA NorCal region. The amateur-road-racing market was hungry for a low-cost, highly competitive series that Spec Miata filled perfectly.
THE NATIONAL STAGE
Daniels: An SCCA committee was formed to take Spec Miata to the national level. It had to happen, because without a national championship, you can't attract the best racers. The class would have stayed small-time. But then, the SCCA brass declared that Spec Miata would never go national and dissolved the committee.
Dowie: There was a little bit of turmoil. That group lost focus on the main issue, which was settling on the rules. They were obsessed with getting a national class. Jim [Daniels] was ready to burn down the farm to get it done.
Daniels: The old guys were making secret changes to the general competition rules to prevent Spec Miata from being added as a national class, without taking it to a vote of members. I was tipped off by a source inside the SCCA. So, I took that information public on our website. As a result, I was blackballed from SCCA's committees and boards for years. Maybe I still am. But the membership rose up and demanded a Spec Miata national class.
Dowie: Well, I don't know about that. The process took a year, which is what's supposed to happen.
Daniels: But once it went national, it exploded. When the economic downturn hit, it was only Spec Miata racing that kept some of the regions going. Our region would have gone bankrupt. A lot of these regions derive 60 percent or more of their income from Spec Miata.
McMasters: Without Spec Miata, the SCCA would have folded.
Daniels: You could add another national class now just for the 1.6-liter cars, and they'd still have too many entries for a single race. There are hundreds of old Spec Miatas sitting around waiting for a chance to race. There's never been a car as perfectly suited for amateur racing as the Miata.
McMasters: No other car could have done it. No other car is that fun to drive, that reliable. It was the natural choice.
WHO'S THE BEST SPEC MIATA RACER OF ALL TIME?
John Doonan, Director of Motorsports, Mazda North America: If you define greatness by where you ended up, I'd vote for [Grand-Am driver] Tom Long.
Dowie: There are so many of them, but Jim Daniels was a hell of a race-car driver.
McMasters: I'll tell you one thing . . . it wasn't Jim Daniels.
Daniels: Well, I won the most races.
Source: www.roadandtrack.com
