Racecar Build: STL NB Miata

Nick Leverone's Super Touring Lite Miata is prepped to the limit

Super Touring Lite is becoming one of SCCA's most popular classes, and was the third largest at the 2017 SCCA Runoffs at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is also one of the most varied, with a tremendous number of different models serving as bases for STL cars, and a wide variety of approaches to building them. Nick Leverone's NB Miata is one of three unique approaches to building a Mazda STL car that we'll explore. Leverone was the top finishing Mazda driver at the Runoffs and won several SCCA U.S. Majors Tour races this year.

"I don't think we spared anything on it," says Leverone, who is one of the principals of Massachusetts-based Flatout Motorsports. Flatout builds and preps cars, along with renting a variety of racing machinery. "It's built to the limit of the rules – suspension, engine, driveline, aero...whatever we could do to make the car faster, we've done to it. We developed a lot of the pieces in-house – the chin spoiler, the splitter on the front, the header. We've done some stuff in the water pump area that we are allowed to do that I don't think some other people are doing quite yet. They may find out soon enough that they can find some power there."

There are few areas of development Leverone hasn't explored. "At this point, I'm not really sure there is anything," he says. "The guys at the front of the fields, they've pretty much maxed out everything they can do with the cars. And I think things are close. There may need to be a little bit of tweaking."

Read the full story at MazdaMotorsports.com