Joliet, IL (July 24-26) —Four short days after a rollercoaster of a race in Birmingham, The Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup Series moved north for Round 6 to the Harrah’s Autobahn Grand Prix Presented by Mazda at the Autobahn Country Club just Southwest of Chicago. Two race weekends in a row at new venues created exciting, challenging racing in the series. At the halfway point in the season, Mark Jenkins had improved his position in the Drivers Championship to fourth and was ready to make a bid for the top three. Mike Jenkins had slipped one position to eleventh, but was only four points out of ninth as the Jenkins Brothers, racing with the support of Team MER, prepared for another exciting weekend of Playboy MX-5 Cup racing.
 
Autobahn Country Club is primarily a “Members Only” track, and Round 6 of the MX-5 Cup marked the first time the club had hosted a professional race. The 3.56 mile, 21-turn track features a serpentine layout with several very tight corners followed by short straights. Passing is extremely difficult and the track’s very bumpy surface lent to a very different, technical approach to the typical racing line.
 
Several new drivers showed up for the event, most locals to the track, and they had a good head start on the competition. In the opening day of practice The Traxxas/BF Goodrich/Simpson/Amsoil/Mazda MX-5s found traction quickly on the difficult track surface. The BF Goodrich R1’s worked superbly, but tuning the cars’ damping to the rough track surface proved challenging, as drivers commonly found that what helped in one corner hurt in the next. As “official” practice closed, Mark and Mike were eleventh and fifteenth respectively.
 
Before qualifying, Team MER made aggressive changes to the Traxxas MX-5s and anticipated only a couple of laps would be required to prime the cars before they settled into a consistent pace. On the first lap, Mike was removed from serious contention of setting a fast lap as another competitor had slung mud across the Turn 6 apex causing Mike to spin through the corner into a four wheel off-road excursion.  After a less-than-optimal first lap, Mark brought the No. 25 MX-5 into pit lane and made a setup change which helped him cut his lap time immensely. Mark went on to qualify eleventh in the 24-car field. Left to deal with mud in the wheels of his No. 47 MX-5, Mike managed to qualify seventeenth. Not yet satisfied with their setup for the challenging course, the team strategized to make the cars race ready.
 
When the green flag dropped at noon on Sunday, race fans both at the track and those who viewed the action live in high definition on HDNET, witnessed twenty-four Mazda MX-5’s fight for position on the narrow ribbon of pavement leading through turn one. At the end of the first lap, Mark fell back to fourteenth as Mike advanced to fifteenth. Now together, the Jenkins brothers began to slice their way through the field. By lap four, Mark was eleventh and Mike twelfth. For the next several laps a four-car battle raged between Mike, Mark, fellow MER team driver Jeff Mosing and Lyonel Kent. Mark clawed his way up to eighth while Mike ran as high as eleventh. As the race progressed, Mark, Mosing and Kent traded positions numerous times with some contact along the way.  In the end, Mark won the fight for eighth place but not without drawing the ire of the SCCA.  “Jeff, Lyonel, and I have been racing each other closely the last couple of races  Unfortunately, my brakes experienced an ABS ‘dump mode’ as the car unloaded over the bumps in Turn 8 causing me to squarely greet Kent’s rear bumper. I temporarily lost a couple spots when Lyonel returned the favor just three turns later and sent me dirt farming through T11. I called the incidents ‘even’ over the radio and us driver’s were laughing and shaking hands post-race.” Mike’s luck went away on lap thirteen when he had a spin coming out onto the front straightaway. “I was having a great battle with Stan Wilson and we were catching the skirmish for eighth. I squeezed on the power just a little too early and ended up overworking the rear tires resulting in a tire-smoking spin!” Mike grinned. “Overall, I was disappointed considering I knew we had the pace for a top-ten car.” After the race, the series officials penalized Mark, Jeff and Lyonel Championship points for car-to-car contact, but Mark is still in a strong fifth-place position in the Drivers Championship."

For more info, visit MX-5 Cup website.