Posting this article a little late, but back in June we had the chance to take our #200 Mad Fast Autosport Mazda Miata to Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP) to take on the 40+ car field for 15 total hours of racing with the Champcar Endurance Series. Pulling up to the track for the first time, we saw a bunch of cars doing the Friday testing session, most notably our friends at Pinkies Out bring their three beasts of cars, Lexus SC300 and two BMW E30s.
Saturday we started, for the first time in 7 years, on pole! This helped us out tremendously as most of the other A class cars were starting towards the back half of the field. As the green flag waved we brought the field into turn one for the first time, with a D class mustang right behind us, it didn’t take long for the higher horsepower cars to outpower us down CMP’s massive straightaways. We eventually after a few hours were passed by the #251 Miata, a car with full aero kit and very quick drivers. Running 2nd place for most of the race, eventually they had transmission issues and we were able to get back by. We ran the typical 2 hour stints giving us a nice even stint time for the race, while a few other cars decided for different strategies. So we got a little worried at the end when another Class A car had yet to pit with about an hour to go, but when they finally came in to pit and we gained three laps on them, we knew as long as we kept it on track we would be bringing home the win. It got a little interesting the last hour as a random pop-up thunderstorm came upon us and we were being dumped on with rain. With the track with so much rubber from two days of testing and racing, it got super slick as my dad, Mike Manley got in the car to finish out the race. With only one big moment into turn one, he nursed the car back to take home our first ever win in Champcar’s A Class!
SUNDAY
Sunday was a whole ‘nother beast! We started dead last this time as the grid was reversed from Saturday. This time Troy Street started out the race for us and did great keeping the car clean for the first two hours. My dad got back in the car for the second stint since there was a mandatory quiet hour coming up, leaving us with about a 30 minute stint. Unfortunately about 2 laps into his stint, our clutch decided it didn’t want to work anymore and promptly exploded into thousands of little pieces of kevlar, thus ending our weekend a little early. This was a sour way to end the weekend but with our first race win the day before, it didn’t upset us too much!
Thanks again for Champcar putting on another great race, the team for working together perfectly and getting our first win, Pinkies Out for bring home back to back 1-2 finishes and being really cool pit neighbors, and to CMP for having a great facility for us to come race at.
Looking forward to the next race, maybe Daytona?