Actually, this is NEWS to me. Last I heard Mazda was going to withdraw support for the SCCA due to them not supporting MX-5 packages and supporting illegal mods for the Solstice/Sky.
Cliffs, SCCA approves of teh MS-R package, then deems them illegal. While Pontiac and Saturn dealers DO NOT carry aftermarket “OEM” parts as required by the rules.
Nothing is finalized at this point, and as a Mazda Team Support member as well as an SCCA member I didn’t vote for a move to NASA on the survey that they sent around. The Spec Miata guys could go either way, as the competition is there in large numbers for both organizations. For Solo, though, NASA has nothing compared to the SCCA, and I am strongly against such a move, as all it will do is dilute competition as some people stay with SCCA and others go the NASA.
I didn’t bother to post about it here because anybody concerned about such activities would have read about it elsewhere.
It looks as if the dispute between Mazda and the SCCA has been patched up. This is an excerpt from an email I received this week.
To: MAZDASPEED Team Members
From: Robert Davis
Re: Survey Results & SCCA Update
SCCA Meeting:
On Thursday, December 6th the MAZDASPEED management team met with the SCCA leadership at the annual PRI show in Orlando, Florida. To squash one rumor I saw in several forums the meeting was NOT just about the MSR package. That was just one agenda item. Rather we covered a multitude of topics related to both club and professional racing. Topics included:
· Court of Appeals process
· Classification/rule change process
· MX-5 Cup
· SPEED World Challenge
The meeting was lengthy and productive. After two plus hours we hopefully all came away with a better sense of serving our respective (and often overlapping) customers. I will not go into too many details as the SCCA leadership will be conveying a message to all of their members. I would like to note that:
The SCCA board expressed a unanimous position that Mazda participation is critical.
We were advised that changes to the Court of Appeals process will allow all manufactures their day in court.
The SCCA is handling the board member remark internally and we are satisfied with their course of action. Again, this one comment was not the issue.
Mazda racers who wish to contact the SCCA leadership should direct all comments to president@scca.org
Note: In late November we had also met with the NASA leadership and are looking forward to serving our Mazda customers who race with NASA. NASA has not positioned themselves as a replacement for the SCCA, and we know that for certain regions of the country, NASA is not an option. Our support of NASA should be viewed like our support of the NHRA, contingency support of a national organization where our customers chose to race. End of story. We will support each organization based upon objective criteria. Being better than the other guy is not the issue.
