Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca 2016
April 29, 2016 to May 01, 2016
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Salinas, CA.

Watkins Glen International Raceway 2016
April 29, 2016 to May 01, 2016
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Salinas, CA.

Road America 2016
June 16, 2016 to June 19, 2016
Road America
Plymouth, WI

Canadian Tire Motorsports Park 2016
July 08, 2016 to July 10, 2016
Canadian Tire Motorsports Park
Bowmanville, ON

VIRginia International Raceway 2016
August 26, 2016 to August 28, 2016
VIRginia International Raceway
Alton, VA

Road Atlanta 2016
September 28, 2016 to October 01, 2016
Road Atlanta
Braselton, GA

Mazda is the only manufacturer with a clearly defined path for amateur racing drivers to take on the way to the top. And it doesn’t just include the open-wheel series in the formal Mazda Road to Indy—racers who compete in MX-5 Miatas or other Mazda vehicles will also receive assistance so that they too can ascend to the next rung of the ladder.

For the first in an ongoing series, meet Sarah Montgomery from California whose family is a key driving-force behind her talents on the track…

Sarah Montgomery was ten years old when her parents took her to a Verizon IndyCar event. Something clicked immediately. “I saw Danica Patrick race. I smelled the burning rubber, the racing fuel, and I was hooked. From that point on, I started watching every single race that came on TV.”

She begged to go back to the next IndyCar race, and her parents took her. That did it. “I guess every kid has a new dream every other week—astronaut, doctor, race car driver. My parents hoped I’d get it out of my system and move on to the next dream, but it never happened. My mother hoped eventually that I might move on to ballet or something. Ain’t happening.”

So they got her a racing kart, and Sarah started on the dirt oval tracks around her home in Lafayette, Louisiana. She started winning races, then track championships, then she was invited to participate in a Skip Barber shootout that used shifter karts.

But Sarah had never driven a kart with a manual transmission. So she and her father, an Interstate battery dealer in Lafayette, set up a course in a big parking lot with pylons, and she started learning to drive a shifter kart. A guy drove up and watched, then commented to her father: “Your son’s going pretty fast out there!”

“That’s my daughter,” her dad said proudly. Thus began a relationship with Jeff Mosing, a Mazda MX-5 Cup racer, who just happened to notice a kart going fast on a parking lot. Mosing, along with former racer Roy Johnson, became Sarah’s mentors and backers, guiding her into the Mazda MX-5 Cup series.

And that’s where she is now, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca as part of the potent ALARA Racing team, which Mosing also drives for. After a solid pair of races at Mazda Raceway, out of 26 drivers in the series, she is 11th in points.

“No professional racing series is cheap, but the MX-5 Cup is probably the most affordable one out there,” says Sarah, now 21. “And as for the people at Mazda—if you are willing to put in the effort, they’ll do anything they can to help you out.”

Besides racing, Sarah Montgomery knows she has an additional responsibility: being a role model. “The first time a little girl came up to me and said, ‘I want to be just like you’—well, it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe.”

Courtesy of Zoom Zoom Magazine | Read entire article here.