The Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear at the Mobile 1 Presents Grand Prix of Mosport
This year’s crop of young lions clawing their way to the top of the Star Mazda Championship includes three Canadians – Toronto’s Marco Di Leo, Devin Cunningham from Quebec and Vancouver racer Lorenzo Mandarino. All three, though accomplished racers, are rookies in the Star Mazda series - but each has won a race, all are in the top-10 in the championship battle and all are a threat to repeat that victory on any given weekend.
The Star Mazda Championship is now in its 17th year as one of the most competitive and successful open-wheel driver development series. Star Mazda graduates include Marco Andretti, Graham Rahal and the 2007 Champ Car Atlantic champion, Raphael Matos, who won the Star Mazda championship in 2006 and moved up to Atlantic via the Mazda Motorsports Ladder program. Other graduates include 2004 Star Mazda champion Michael McDowell who just won back-to-back ARCA stock car races and is challenging for the championship in his rookie year.
Mazda, this year celebrating the 40th anniversary of the rotary engine that powers both the Star Mazda race cars and the RX-8 sports car, has so thoroughly embraced racing as a core corporate value, that they have created a ‘motorsports scholarship ladder’ reaching all the way from karting, through Star Mazda, to Champ Car.
The rising Canadian stars of the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear will be battling for their shot at the big time as a support race at one of Canada’s premier racing events – the Mobile 1 Presents Grand Prix of Mosport, August 24 – 26.
The Star Mazda Championship is the Junior A hockey of open-wheel racing, an exciting, competitive and well-established training ground for future stars of the sport. The cream of the crop will graduate to the AHL Champ Car Atlantic series, and from there to the NHL Champ Car World Series.
Graduates of the Star Mazda Championship include such top open-wheel racers as Champ Car star Graham Rahal and IRL standout Marco Andretti, as well as Canadian Atlantic series racers James Hinchcliffe and Kevin Lacroix. Proving its versatility as a training ground, other Star Mazda standouts have also gone on to high profile careers in various areas of racing; 2002 Mosport winner Guy Cosmo is now a top sports car racer while 2004 Mosport winner and series champion Michael McDowell has raced both prototypes and Champ Cars and is now making a name for himself as a front-runner in the ARCA stock car series with recent back-to-back victories.
This year’s crop of young lions clawing their way to the top of the Star Mazda Championship includes three Canadians – Toronto’s Marco Di Leo, Devin Cunningham from Quebec and Vancouver racer Lorenzo Mandarino. All three Canadians competing in the 2007 Star Mazda Championship are accomplished racers; all have one win, all are in the top-10 in the championship battle and all are a threat to repeat that victory on any given weekend.
Toronto’s Marco Di Leo, driver of the #21 Maxwell Paper Racing/Nugett Mazda, won the season-opener in Sebring. He was the 2006 Skip Barber National Championship runner-up and in 2005 was the 2005 Skip Barber Scholarship winner, Team Sunoco Ultra 94 member and F2000 Bridgestone Series champion.
Quebec racer Devin Cunningham won the Discovery Channel’s ‘Star Racer’ competition in 2006, and is racing his prize – the #33 Discovery Channel/SH Karting Mazda fielded by AIM Autosport. A top kart racer, Cunningham won Round Five of the Star Mazda Championship at Portland. Lorenzo Mandarino, driver of the #23 Newway Forming/Team G.Fro Mazda, won Round Four at Salt Lake City. Like Cunningham, he has an extensive karting background with eleven karting championships since 1966 and winner of the Super Pro class in the 2005 SKUSA Supernational.
Dominating the Star Mazda Championship battle so far is 18 year-old Dane Cameron, the young Californian who has scored three wins, four poles and four top-5 finishes. Hot on his heels – including the Canadians -- are two dozen top young drivers from across the U.S. and around the world, including last year’s winner of this race, Ron white of Santa Clara, California, who will be piloting the #69 Maxwell Paper Racing/Maxwell Paper Products Mazda.
Also top contenders for victory at Mosport are Australian James Davison (#7 Easternats/Velocity Motorsports Mazda), England’s Jonny Baker (#6 Andersen Racing Mazda) and even an extremely fast young lady from Switzerland, Natacha Gachnang (#35 AIM Autosport Mazda), who made Star Mazda series history by scoring back-to-back podium finishes in Rounds 5 and 6.
At the other end of the age spectrum, Star Mazda Championship “Master Class” racers include 50 year-old Steve Hickham of Corpus Christi, Texas (#17 HB Turbo/Hickham Motorsports) and 64 year-old Dan Tomlin Jr. of Dallas, Texas (#56 Team Tomlin). Tomlin races with his son and business partner, 42 year-old Dan Tomlin III (#58 Team Tomlin). Also in the Master Class is Gerry Kraut, 56, from North Oaks, Minnesota (#55 Dougherty and Company/JDC Motorsports). These ‘gentlemen racers’ may not be fighting for the win, but do run regularly in the top half of the field – and they love to race, happy to be out there and mixing it up with drivers who will be the stars of tomorrow.
All the drivers in the 12-race 2007 Star Mazda Championship are racing identical high-tech open-wheel cars. The Star Mazda race car features a carbon fiber chassis, fully-adjustable suspension and paddle shifters on the steering wheel, just like both Champ Car and Formula One. Powering all of the Star Mazda race cars is Mazda’s legendary rotary engine that produces 240 horsepower, top speeds of 150 mph and 0 to 60 mph acceleration of 2.4 seconds. And the engine is so reliable that it can last an entire racing season, or longer, between re-builds. This helps keep the cost of racing in Star Mazda down to a fraction of the budget required to compete in any other open wheel series in the U.S. or Europe.
And here’s the story on what the young lions are all fighting for; forty years ago, on May 31, 1967, Mazda introduced the first street car with a rotary engine, the Cosmo Sport. Since then, they’ve built two million rotary-engined vehicles and the company has built its very identity on the idea of Zoom-Zoom and every vehicle they produce having the soul of a sports car.
In pursuit of that ideal, Mazda has created a unique, company-sponsored ‘motorsports ladder’ that reaches all the way from karting to Champ Car. The winner of a shootout among 2007 karting champions will get a scholarship in the 2008 Skip Barber series, while the Skip Barber champion moves up to Star Mazda, the Star Mazda champion moves up to the Champ Car Atlantic Series Powered by Mazda and the Atlantic champion gets $2 million toward a Champ Car drive. So they’re all racing for a dream, and the opportunity of a lifetime.
Mosport is Round 10 of the 12-race 2007 Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear, the third of three back-to-back races that also included Road America and Trois Rivières. On-track action at Mosport begins with a pair of practice sessions on Thursday, August 24, followed by one more practice session on Friday the 25th. Qualifying to set the starting grid takes place from 9:15 am to 10:00 am, Saturday, August 26. The 45-hour Star Mazda Championship race is scheduled to take the green flag at 3:50 pm Saturday afternoon.
Exhausted teams and drivers will then have the entire month of September off to rest and re-build race cars before heading down the home stretch with the final two races of the season, Road Atlanta on October 4 – 5 and the season finale at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Northern California October 19 – 20.
Star Mazda races are broadcast on the SPEED Channel, with the Mosport event scheduled to air on Saturday, September 11 at 12 pm Eastern. To find out when future Star Mazda races will air, log on to www.speedtv.com/programs.
For more information on the Star Mazda Championship and its drivers, as well as the Mazda Motorsports ladder system, please visit www.starmazda.com and www.mazdausa.com. For more information please contact: Peter Frey, (818) 398-5733 (Pacific Time), Bstorm2000@aol.com
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