It’s all over, folks. They let a meager Mazda Miata into West Coast vintage racing. It’s all downhill from here. Fields of high dollar metal will now be diluted with hundreds of Miata’s, modern day Corvettes, and, god forbid, maybe even a front wheel drive car like an Ingetra Type R soon (gasp).

Jokes aside, yours personally loves the historic but reasonably priced race cars. So I was thrilled to learn that CSRG (Classic Sports Racing Group), the sanctioning body of the David Love Races at Sonoma, has allowed in this, its first Miata. This was the first of later many a Miata to be driven to a national SCCA championship. Road and Track “Hot Shoe” Randy Pobst, accomplished this feat first with this pre-production, turned race prepped car in 1992. Then local racing coach Larry Oka cared for and campaigned the car until selling it recently to a very capable gentleman racer, Ross Lindell.

Miata’s are now the most entered model in the history of racing. But in the early 90s, Mazda was eyeing sales to “sporty” road drivers, not thousands of amateur racers. So while there was some reluctance on the part of CSRG to allow in such a common car, I applaud their recognition of its significance. Vintage racing needs new fans, especially younger ones. And every class of vintage racing is run purely for the passion and doesn’t always draw huge crowds. So why not allow in very significant production “Radwood era” racecars to a physically-distant-by-nature sport?

Many drivers used this smaller event to bring out cars new to them or not normally in rotation. Whoever ran this red Porsche 944 was a last minute entry and a welcome change from the usual models in this class.

With only one Trans Am Car in attendance (an 800bhp C3 Corvette), Ross’ Miata matched well with the nine Datsun 510 entries and a smattering of the usual 911s and 2002s in the exciting 1968-1990 SCCA class. Friend of DWA/racer Glenn Chiu managed a very strong 6th place in Sunday’s feature race in this class even though he suffered steering box issues in his #33 Datsun 510.

With the Corvette easily gapping the rest of the run group, Troy Ermish in his #38 Blue/Black 510 once again showed incredible skill and pace, even challenging the ‘vette on the first lap or two, and taking “2nd” overall. Full results for the weekend are available here: https://racehero.io/events/david-love-vintage-race/results

Several drivers I talked to were still heavily tinkering with their cars since the race season is still justifiably in the air. There are strong rumors that the Monterey Historics will sort of take place in the form of a two day, one weekend only “Drivers Appreciation” event with over 300 interested cars so far.

Compared to the Goodwood Festival of Speed or the Monterey Historics, The David Love Races has always been a more scaled down affair. So even in the Sonoma heat, it seemed fairly easy for the participants (no attendees were allowed) to stay safe with personal protective gear, things racers and mechanics are used to using.

Stay tuned to the CSRG site and the others below to see which future events can and will be run safely.

https://CSRG.com/events/

https://www.csrgracing.org/

https://www.co.monterey.ca.us/government/government-links/weathertech-raceway

http://sportscardigest.com/category/vintage-car-racing/

Oh yeah…and the first ever to the US McClaren Speedtail showed up…