{"id":5387,"date":"2023-01-23T11:47:01","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T16:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=5387"},"modified":"2023-01-23T11:47:01","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T16:47:01","slug":"mazda-mx-5-cup-prepares-to-astound-fans-in-season-opener-at-daytona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/23\/mazda-mx-5-cup-prepares-to-astound-fans-in-season-opener-at-daytona\/","title":{"rendered":"Mazda MX-5 Cup Prepares to Astound Fans in Season Opener at Daytona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bigger per-race payouts, large class of rookies and new Mazda Scholarship winners set to do battle with a large roster of returning Mazda MX-5 Cup winners and champions to launch 2023 season<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA, Fla. (January 23, 2023)<\/strong>– The highly anticipated Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich\u00ae Tires 2023 season opener has arrived. More than 30 cars will take to Daytona International Speedway, January 25 \u2013 27, and wow fans with some of the most intense racing of the week.<\/p>\n

Coming into Round One and Two as the reigning Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup champion is Jared Thomas (No. 96 JTR Motorsports Engineering). Thomas\u2019 team has expanded once again this year, fielding eight cars, including his own. It\u2019s a significant workload, but it can\u2019t dampen Thomas\u2019 enthusiasm for the start of another race season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel good,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cIt feels like a fresh start. Coming into the season, especially after a very stressful points battle last year, it feels good. I enjoy the beginning of the year so much because you\u2019re just out and going for podiums and race wins, you\u2019re not being conservative. It gets stressful when you start thinking about points and you\u2019re the guy everyone is after.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas kicked off his 2022 championship season with a win in Round Two at Daytona. He knows all too well how important it is to start the year strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really sets the tone for the rest of the season,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cIt\u2019s always good to start the season well, because it takes the pressure off. Especially with St. Pete being next, because it\u2019s a track you don\u2019t have a lot of time at. The guys that are experienced at St. Pete always have the upper hand. If you can get through Daytona with a good result and show up to St. Pete with a lot of experience, it\u2019s a good start to the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experience at Daytona is something that most of the 11 rookies entered are lacking. One who does have experience racing at this roval is the newest MX-5 Cup Shootout Scholarship winner Nate Cicero (No. 83 McCumbee McAleer Racing). Cicero raced at Daytona last year in the Spec MX-5 Challenge. A few months later he was invited to Mazda\u2019s MX-5 Cup Shootout and came away with the big scholarship valued at $110,000. The rookie is under no illusions that his debut will be easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of it\u2019s going to be the drafting game,\u201d Cicero said. \u201cI\u2019m going to get acclimated to that and find my feet. I need to get these first two races down and gain experience. A top five would be really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking home the Mazda runner-up shootout scholarship valued at $75,000 is Thomas Annunziata (No. 10 Hixon Motorsports). He dipped his toe in the MX-5 Cup pool last year, racing at VIRginia International Raceway, and showed impressive pace. He is part of Hixon Motorsports\u2019 nine entries, which includes two former scholarship winners and rookie of the year recipients: Connor Zilisch (No. 72 Hixon Motorsports) and Selin Rollan (No. 87 Hixon Motorsports).<\/p>\n

Winner of Mazda\u2019s Women\u2019s Initiative Scholarship, also valued at $75,000, is Heather Hadley (No. 54 Spark Performance). Hadley\u2019s background is quite different from her competitors. She comes to MX-5 Cup following success in Legends Racing. Hadley believes her experience has prepared her for most facets of MX-5 Cup racing, but there are some things she\u2019s focused her off-season training on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel I\u2019m somewhat prepared for aspects of MX-5 Cup racing,\u201d Hadley said. \u201cFor the aspects I\u2019m unfamiliar with, like the 45-minute long races, I\u2019m trying to prepare in other ways that I can\u2019t do on track. For that example in particular, I\u2019m training at the gym for at least an hour and building up my endurance and cardio levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hadley will have experienced teammates at Spark Performance to help her adapt, including 2021 Champion Gresham Wagner (No. 5 Spark Performance).<\/p>\n

Something that will raise a few eyebrows around the paddock is the return of Robert Noaker (No. 13 Slipstream Performance). Noaker\u2019s 2018 MX-5 Cup race win at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course set the Guinness World Record for youngest driver to win an IndyCar-sanctioned race (14 years old). Then, in the 2020 season, he finished runner-up in the championship by a scant four points. After building his racing resume in different categories, still-young Noaker returns to MX-5 Cup after a two-year absence.<\/p>\n

If the drivers seem to be pushing extra hard for every single position at Daytona, it might be because of the new per-race payouts. Mazda announced at the end of last season that for 2023 it would pay prize money to the top 10 drivers for all 14 races. Race winners receive $6,000 and payouts decrease incrementally until $2,000 for sixth through 10th. Additionally, the highest finishing female driver will receive $2,000. This prize money is in addition to the year-end championship payouts ($250,000 for the series champion) and brings the total of prize money and scholarships offered by Mazda this season to more than $1 million.<\/p>\n

All MX-5 Cup races are available to stream for free on RACER.com and IMSA.com\/tvlive. Round One from Daytona is set for Thursday, January 26, at 5:30pm ET. Round Two will take place Friday, January 27, at 10:15am ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bigger per-race payouts, large class of rookies and new Mazda Scholarship winners set to do battle with a large roster of returning Mazda MX-5 Cup winners [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5387","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\/5387","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=5387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5389,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions\/5389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}