2010 Season
So, not too long now until the start of the 2010 season, and with the introduction of the Mk3 cars, it promises to be a fantastic year!
Since 2004 MaX5 has combined the rare qualities of close and highly competitive one make motor racing, and a reputation for avoiding body contact, into a highly successful race championship. After years of running the MK1 cars, which ceased production in 1998, the move to the current MK3 car is an exciting development. Building any new race car can be a trying time especially as the original MK1 transferred to race track surprisingly easily and had a fantastic reputation for reliability - the new car had a lot to live up to. Since Early June 2009 Paul Roddison and Max 5 have been developing the new MK-3 race car, Roddison has run the Mk-3 in every MaX5 race and Mazda based track event since July 2009. With no blots on the reliability sheet and work on MaX5 Racing’s own, in house rolling road, development pace has been impressive. Engine and transmission components remain standard to prevent unnecessary cost and significant effort has been invested instead in the Colin Chapman principal of “adding lightness” to gain extra speed and improve power to weight rather than tweaking engines. While speed is important, drivers need to be confident in the car to use it and it is good to see that Mazda chassis engineers have lost none of their magic and that the art has moved on in 20 years. The car has very impressive advances in both the braking and handling capabilities over the old cars and is both immediately drivable for novices and extremely rewarding for more competent drivers with delightful all round performance; even the noise is right!
Development continues for 2010 and further weight reduction is planned with advances being shared across all drivers to ensure equality. This principal is also applied to engines with the in house rolling road facilities being available for car set up, and while it is important to check that no cars are “overly endowed”, it is equally important that no car is hindered by being under powered either.
As 2009 draws to a close, MaX5 have numerous MK3 race cars built with more following during the closed season before the first races in spring 2010. MaX5 looks forward to an exciting race season next year, with new cars and a brand new media and TV coverage package!
