Miatas Take Over Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
What’s not to love about the Mazda Miata? They are lightweight, rear wheel drive and affordable enough for almost any type of car enthusiast to own. There is almost a cult following for this car, and it showed during the first weekend of September for the 25th anniversary of the Mazda Miata. Miata enthusiasts from all over the world including Canada, Philippines, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and many US road trippers descended into Monterey, California for the fifth annual Miatas at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca track event and world record attempt.
I was lucky enough to register for the hot laps for this event back in February when the reserved spaces sold out in a matter of days. This is when the seed of excitement was planted in my mind and I knew that I had seven months to prepare my 94 Miata for this momentous event. Before I knew it, it was time to drive up to Monterrey to share my adoration of this car with other Miata lovers.
Friday morning on our way to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, stopping by the gas station to fill up “Rico” before we get to the world record attempt.The first chain of events that took place was the world record attempt on Friday where the organizers for the event painstakingly arranged a giant MX-5 25 visual on Wolf Hill at Laguna Seca. Much to everyone’s surprise, this staging area was a giant dust lot and anyone who had any hope of keeping their cars clean were sadly mistaken. Being one of the many Miata owners who washed their car for this event, I can contest to the nice dust bath that my car received while driving into the staging area. 1,210 Miatas showed up to partake in this world record attempt along with another 724 on Saturday for a grand total of 1,934 Miatas over the weekend. A new world record was achieved: The largest Miata gathering in history!
This was the insanely dusty staging area where all the Miatas were directed in for the world record attempt and aerial photo. The sun was out so the top came off but unfortunately Rico got a free dust bath in the process. 
Miatas traveled from all over the world to attend this event. The Canadians were eager to show their support for their country and attendance. One of the Canadians was handing out Canada pins to fellow Miata owners that parked nearby. While all the Miatas were gridlocked on the hill, this was the perfect opportunity for Mazda to showcase the new generation of Miata coming out in 2016. There are only three running ND Miatas in existence at this current point in time and Mazda made a point to bring one car out for this event to show it to all of the eager enthusiasts. We were all directed to the entrance road that led into Wolf Hill, which was where they paraded the new ND Miata, the three previous generation Miatas as well as the official Mazda pace cars. Each of these cars was piloted by an important member of Miata history including Tom Matano (Chief Designer for the MX-5 in Japan), Bob Hall (US Mazda Development) and a few other important gentleman whose names I forgot to write down, sorry!
The complete lineup of every generation Miata thus far, driven by critical people in the development of the MX-5.
