{"id":1018,"date":"2018-07-06T14:22:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T14:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2018-07-10T15:28:53","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T15:28:53","slug":"battery-tender-global-mazda-mx-5-cup-alum-shine-at-watkins-glen-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/06\/battery-tender-global-mazda-mx-5-cup-alum-shine-at-watkins-glen-international\/","title":{"rendered":"Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup Alum Shine at Watkins Glen International"},"content":{"rendered":"
Watkins Glen, N.Y. (7 July 2018<\/span><\/span>) \u2013 From the climbing esses to the Boot to victory lane, Mazda\u2019s Road to 24 was well on display this weekend at Watkins Glen International.<\/div>\n
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The Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires has long proven to be a great place for drivers to develop their speed and racecraft as well as further their sports car careers. This past weekend saw several current and past series drivers compete in IMSA competition at Watkins Glen International resulting in some noteworthy finishes.<\/div>\n
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The Global Mazda MX-5 Cup overall champion takes home $200,000 to put towards their budding career.<\/div>\n
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2017 Global MX-5 Cup Champion, Patrick Gallagher, earned $275,000 \u2013 after also winning the series\u2019 Global Challenge \u2013 and is now competing full time in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge alongside his previous Global Mazda MX-5 Cup team owner, Chad McCumbee.<\/div>\n
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Saturday\u2019s<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race saw Gallagher and McCumbee take their first overall victory of the season after starting from the outside pole position.<\/div>\n
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\u201cChad (McCumbee) did a great job all day and the guys at Multimatic and ModSpace gave us a good rig, so hats off to them and all the guys in the heat changing our tires and stuff,\u201d said Gallagher. \u201cWe were knocking on the door of a win at Mid-Ohio and I\u2019m glad we finally got one here. I\u2019d have liked to win at Mid-Ohio being a Buckeye, but I\u2019ll take this one too.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The TCR category of the IMSA CTSC saw several familiar faces including Bryan Ortiz, Tom Long and Kenton Koch.<\/div>\n
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Serving as Global Mazda MX-5 Cup development driver and driver coach, Tom Long found himself returning to IMSA competition at the Glen as he stormed to a TCR class victory \u2013 his second of win of the season.<\/div>\n
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\"\"\u201cDuring the opening laps of the final restart I was able to pass for the lead and never looked back,\u201d said Long. \u201cIt was an exciting dash to the finish where everyone was in full-on sprint mode. Watkins Glen is a physically demanding circuit and combined with the extreme heat and the sprint pace to the finish it was really intense. Pulling into the winner\u2019s circle felt so sweet after the ups and downs of the season so far.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Competing in IMSA competition for the first time this year was Ortiz who is currently sitting second in the 2018 Global Mazda MX-5 Cup championship after winning the opening race of the season at Circuit of the Americas along with two following podium finishes.<\/div>\n
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Ortiz, who was on board a Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR machine, came home with a fifth-place result in his first IMSA CTSC outing of the season.<\/div>\n
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“We ended the race P5 after my teammate having to serve a penalty that put us a lap down that we couldn\u2019t recover from,\u201d said Ortiz. \u201cI got in the car for almost the last two hours and never gave up even knowing it was impossible to get in the same lap as the leaders, but it was an awesome opportunity to get to drive this weekend.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Also competing in the TCR category was 2014 Global Mazda MX-5 Cup champion, Kenton Koch. Koch who has spent the majority of his career competing on board Mazdas –\u00a0Mazda Cooper Tires Prototype Lites Powered by Mazda\u00a0and IMSA Prototype Challenge Presented by Mazda Series \u2013 had his first entry of the season in CTSC competition where he finished 4th<\/sup>\u00a0in the TCR class driving an Audi RS3 LMS.<\/div>\n
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\"\"2017 Global Mazda MX-5 Cup alumni, Max Faulkner returned behind the wheel of his Porsche Cayman competing in the ST class to secure a third place result \u2013 his third podium finish of the 2018 season.<\/div>\n
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\u201cP3 was a solid result but not what the team deserved,\u201d said Faulkner. \u201cA 2-mph mistake in pit lane led to a drive through penalty towards the end of the race and took away our chance for the win we wanted. But Bodymotion Racing did a great job as always so big thanks to them for giving us a car capable of winning.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cSince 2007, Mazda has prided itself in being THE brand that gives young drivers a clear path to the top of the motorsports world,\u201d said John Doonan, Director, Mazda Motorsports.\u00a0 \u201cToday, the Mazda Road to 24 and the Mazda Road to Indy are world-recognized and world-acclaimed programs that have allowed dozens of drivers achieve their dreams.\u00a0 The Continental Series race at Watkins Glen was an absolutely perfect example of the fruits of our labor and a true validation of our strategy.\u00a0 Huge congrats to Chad, Patrick, Britt, Tom and the race teams that got them to victory lane.\u00a0 Days like that, when the graduates of the Mazda system have success, make us very proud.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The next round of Global Mazda MX-5 Cup competition will continue with Rounds 7 & 8 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on\u00a0July 27<\/span><\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0\u2013 29th<\/sup>.<\/div>\n
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Watkins Glen, N.Y. (7 July 2018) \u2013 From the climbing esses to the Boot to victory lane, Mazda\u2019s Road to 24 was well on display this [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-feature","category-mazda-mx-5-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}