Racecar Build: Marc Hoover's T1 Miata

Turbocharged Miata has been winning and setting track records in the fastest Touring class

One of the great things about the Miata is that there are many places to race it. For those looking to prove their driving skills but not their development prowess, there's Spec Miata. If you like to tinker a bit more, you can look at the Street Touring classes in SCCA or Performance Touring in NASA. Like to tinker a lot? SCCA's Production classes may be your calling, or GT-Lite. There are many classes you would expect to see a Miata, but in Touring 1 with Vipers, Corvettes, Ferraris, and Porsches? That's just crazy. But Marc Hoover doesn't call it crazy. He calls it winning.

Hoover used to race Mazda-powered D Sports Racers (now Prototype 2 in the SCCA vernacular), and even won an SCCA National Championship in the class in 2001. A hard hit into a wall, though, left him unable to walk for a while. As he tells it, when he recovered and started to rebuild the car, his wife said, "No, I don't think so."