Mazda MX-5 Cup Cars Are Finally Racing on a NASCAR Oval

Mazda MX-5 Cup cars offer some of the tightest, most exciting racing in the world. Short ovals, meanwhile, provide some of the best spectator experiences in sports. Like chocolate and peanut butter, the two just belong together. They’ll finally combine later this year at the legendary Martinsville Speedway, and if history is anything to go by, we might be witnessing the dawn of something great.

IMSA, the Mazda MX-5 Cup series’ sanctioning body, announced Wednesday that the championship will partner with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour at the latter’s season finale for a doubleheader on October 26. Both series will race the half-mile Martinsville Speedway, with Modifieds taking the track for 200 laps and Mazdas for 100 of their own. It’ll mark the first time open-top cars have raced at the track since the 1950s, and the first full oval race for the series (as opposed to previous roval races).

The race won’t be a part of the MX-5 Cup calendar, which will conclude two weeks prior at Road Atlanta. Instead, it’ll be treated as an exhibition race, though, it’ll still have a prize: $15,000 and a bespoke grandfather clock, which might be the best trophy in motorsport.

This whole idea apparently came down from the leadership at both IMSA and NASCAR, which arranged an (evidently successful) test last August. According to Mazda Motorsports’ senior manager Jonathan Applegate, the race has seen significant interest from NASCAR hopefuls who want to branch out.

If that test was successful enough to warrant a full race, it’s hard to see the race itself being anything but a successful proof-of-concept. Perhaps it’ll even snowball into an MX-5 speedway series, as there’s precedent for that in MX-5 Cup history. It’s basically how the series came about: Miatas were a smash hit from day one in the SCCA, which eventually established a subclass for the model, and then an exhibition race at Road Atlanta in 1999. That led to regional championships in 2000, sowing the seeds for the MX-5 Cup series we know today.

It’s said that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme, so maybe we’re about to see the beginning of a new race series. “NASCAR Miatas” has a sort of accursed ring to it—and it sounds like the perfect support race for future NASCAR street races.

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