Miata mania: MX-5 Cup series takes place at NASCAR’s Martinsville Oval

And now for something completely different: IMSA, NASCAR’s sports car association, has announced that its Mazda MX-5 Cup Series, which has so far only been held on street courses and race tracks, will race at (NASCAR’s own) Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, the 0.526-mile oval track that has been around since 1947. It is the first NASCAR race to be held here since 1948, the year NASCAR was invented.

It’s perhaps worth noting that in this official announcement from IMSA, the MX-5 Cup Series, NASCAR, and Mazda itself, the word “Miata” is never used, although Mazda still refers to the Miata as a “Miata” on its own website. It’s a Miata, folks: Nobody says MX-5.

Whatever the case, the MX-5 Cup race cars, all built in a shop just around the corner from the NASCAR offices in Daytona Beach, will compete in Martinsville on Saturday, October 26, as part of the same program as the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season finale.

The race will be a 300-lap doubleheader called the Virginia Is For Racing Lovers 300, with the Mazdas completing 100 laps of the track, immediately followed by a 200-lap NASCAR Whelen Modified finale. The MX-5 Cup race will not count toward season points, but the winner will receive $15,000. And a grandfather clock.

The MX-5 Cup schedule includes 14 races this year. Racing began in January at Daytona International Speedway and ended at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta from October 9-12. The Martinsville race takes place two weeks after the MX-5 Cup season finale, giving competitors all winter to rebuild their cars!

“Martinsville Speedway has such a unique and rich racing history and we couldn’t be more excited to add another incredible event to that history,” said Clay Campbell, President of Martinsville Speedway. “It will be the first time we have open-top cars racing on the track since our beginnings in the 1950s. We’re tapping into our past and also our roots as we host the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour finale on the same weekend. We’re excited to bring the Mazda MX-5 Cup to Martinsville and I know the fans will have a great time.”

Hats off to Clay Campbell, whose grandfather built the track, for only using “excited” twice in one paragraph, though he made up for it with “incredible.” Jonathan Applegate, senior manager at Mazda Motorsports, would like to add his own “excited”: “We’ve seen an increase in interest in the series from drivers with NASCAR aspirations looking to hone their skills. Racing at Martinsville is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capitalize on that, and we’re really excited about the opportunity.” Well, he used “opportunity” twice in one sentence.

The press release also states that registration is “open to all racers and is not limited to MX-5 Cup or IMSA drivers and teams.” So head to Flis Performance to buy your new, non-street-legal MX-5 Cup race car; you can’t build one yourself there. It takes a lot of work to convert a street car into a proper race car, but it starts with a Miata shipped to the shop straight from Hiroshima, Japan. For a long time, Mazda and the series really managed to keep the price of a turnkey MX-5 Cup car low: When the series launched in 2016, it initially cost $53,000, a bargain. When the first 150 cars were sold, the price was still low at $58,900. Now it’s $99,000, and 300 of them have been sold since last month. But that’s still a bargain.

The MX-5 Cup drivers are responsible for some of the most exciting and brutal racing in the world; just ask future NASCAR phenom Connor Zilisch. At 17, he is already under contract with Trackhouse Racing (currently home to NASCAR Cup drivers Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez). Zilisch races in the NASCAR Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series; he is the youngest winner in Trans-Am Series history and won his class at the 2024 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona And the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. Zilisch started racing in the MX-5 Cup in 2022. This year he competed in the series eight times and won only once. These Miata drivers are tough, even if there are rumors saying otherwise.

Martinsville is always a very physical, entertaining and turbulent race. Whatever the crash record is for a 100-lap race there, Mazda’s portion of the Virginia Is For Racing Lovers 300 will break it on October 26.

And Flis Performance is already filling out a payment slip for all the new parts they will be selling on October 27th.

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