Long Road Racing: Racing DNA for the road

Long Road Racing is channeling 15 years of road racing experience to provide enthusiasts with their ultimate street Mazda MX-5.

Street cars are compromises. That's not to say any given street car is a bad car, it's just that they are designed to satisfy a large and wide-ranging audience. That's true even for sports cars; they are built to please the most people possible, which comes with compromises. Even with a multitude of packages and options, getting the exact car an enthusiast wants may not be possible from a factory.

That's where the aftermarket comes in. For any popular make and model, the choices in springs, shocks, swaybars, exhausts, intakes and certainly wheels and tires can be endless. But choosing the right parts is often a hit-or-miss proposition unless there's some engineering and experience behind it – the experience, for example, that comes from motorsports competition and building racecars to do a specific job, and do it well.

"I think, at some point, racing becomes part of your DNA, like it or not," says Glenn Long, principal of Long Road Racing. His company developed and builds the Global MX-5 Cup cars that Mazda sells for the Global MX-5 Cup series in the U.S. and other countries, and which many have bought for competing in other arenas or even for track day cars.

"When it came time to select a development partner and single builder for the 2016 Global MX-5 Cup car, Long Road Racing was the logical choice," says Mazda Motorsports director John Doonan.

"As long-time members of the Mazda racing family, the Longs have experienced success on track, displayed the ability to attract talented personnel on the engineering and fabricating side, and earned trust among the racing community. Clearly, the production platform of the Mazda MX-5 is a global 'winner' as a road car (2015 Global Car of the Year and Global Design Car of the Year) as it rolls off the assembly line. Then, when a passionate and talented group of enthusiasts like LRR get ahold of it, even more amazing things can happen with the driver's experience with the car."

Now the company is taking the knowledge and experience it has gathered not only with the Global MX-5 Cup racercar program, but over 15 years in racing, to engineer and build packages to enhance the street MX-5.

"You learn as you develop racecars, be it Global MX-5 Cup cars or Spec Miatas," says Long. "You learn a tremendous amount about what influences what and what the feel is. I think that the racing experience that we have is directly applicable to knowing the desired result from the customer, what the customer wants, and what works and doesn't work."

Long Road Racing is focused on motorsports, so it took some prodding for them to even consider applying that expertise to street machinery. Some of it came from people who experienced the Global MX-5 Cup car and wanted something similar in a street car; some came from enthusiasts who simply found a Mazda racecar developer and wanted a street car that better suited their desires – such as combining the luxuries of the GT model with more of the sportiness of the Club model, which isn't an option from the factory. Long Road began to see a demand and, as the initial rush of producing Global MX-5 Cup cars slowed down, an opportunity.

Now it's committed to taking that motorsport DNA into the realm of street cars. The intention is not to build racecars for the road, but rather to apply motorsports philosophies to delivering a car that better suits the customer's desires. Street cars are worked on alongside the racecar builds, by the same team and using the same tools and approach.

"It's a racing culture," says Cameron Auld, the lead technician at Long Road. "Professional sports car racing is all about precision. I think it trickles down to the way we do things. The racing experience is huge for the customer, because they know it's done right."