Lance Stewart: Returning to his Roots

1990 IMSA GTU champ still enjoys the thrill of racing, and of racing a Mazda.

Lance Stewart, the 2015 runner-up in Touring 4 at the SCCA National Championship Runoffs, has a long history with Mazda. He won the IMSA GTU championship in 1990 in the factory MX-6, winning races at Heartland Park, Portland and Road America, after a year in a privateer Mazda.

"I started out actually driving for another manufacturer, and in 1989 a good friend of mine got a deal to do GTU with Mazda," Stewart recounts. "He asked me to drive, and I said yes. We had a pretty good year and at the end of the season, Mazda came and said they'd like me to drive the factory GTU car with [Roger] Mandeville, and I said, 'Absolutely!' That was a dream year. We won the championship, and we won it decisively. It was one of the high points, if not the high point, of my career."

Now Stewart races for fun, returning to his club racing roots. This year, he also returned to Mazda after competing in a variety of production-based classes over the last decade with several different manufacturers. The reason for bringing the RX-8 to Daytona International Speedway to compete in Touring 4 this year was simple.