Yahoo Autos New race, new rules: Understanding the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup race format for Martinsville
After 19 seasons of staging races on some of the best road and street circuits in North America, the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by Michelin race at Martinsville Speedway will be unlike any MX-5 Cup race before it. For its first oval race, the series is adopting some of the traditional short track oval traditions. What will that look like?
First, qualifying will be single car. Each driver will receive two laps to set their fastest time, and all cars are impounded after qualifying.
The race is 100 laps with a stage break at lap 50. Any caution laps before the stage break do not count and therefore, no driver can lose a lap. The stage break is only five minutes and teams may only perform light bodywork repair and small setup changes.
At the stage break, the driver in first place receives $3,500, the driver running second gets $2,000 and the driver in third gets $1,000.
For the final 50 laps following the stage break, during a caution, the first car behind the leader that is a lap down receives a free pass. This sends the car to the back of the field and gives the driver a lap back. In IMSA, this is referred to as ‘the pass around.’
Restarts are where things get really fun. Typically, in Mazda MX-5 Cup, restarts are single file, but at Martinsville they will be side-by-side. Not only that, but drivers will get to choose which lane (high or low) they wish to start from. As each car approaches a specific mark on the track, they will choose a lane and must stay in that lane until the green flag is back out. This means drivers don’t necessarily restart in the position they were in prior to the yellow. Cars can simply gain position under yellow by selecting the lane with less cars. Drivers who receive a penalty must start at the back of the longest line.
Ultimately the race must end with a green, white, checkered finish. Once the white flag is displayed, the next flag has to be the checkered flag.
At the end, the winner will go home with $25,000 and the traditional Martinsville Ridgeway grandfather clock. Second place receives $10,000, third gets $7,000, fourth takes home $5,000 and fifth collects $4,000. Sixth through 10th place receive $1,000 each. All total more than $60,000 will be handed out in Saturday’s race.
“There was a lot of thought and planning that went into making this format, and everyone worked to integrate some rules and traditions from the oval formats, as well as developing a race that should see the kind of competitive racing that Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup is known for,” Mazda Motorsports Senior Manager Jonathan Applegate said. “This has been a highly collaborative effort between the series, our friends at NASCAR and Martinsville, as well as Andersen Promotions and Flis Performance. The support from Whelen, Michelin and Sunoco have been outstanding, and we are all very eager to see how things play out on Saturday.”
If you can’t be in the stands at Martinsville on Oct, 26, make sure you’re on the IMSA YouTube channel to watch the live stream. Green flag is scheduled for 6:00pm ET.