80 replies to this topic

[Danica Davison]

"P-POCKET CHANGE"  is da man!

[Tom OPM]

Congrats P-Money. Very much deserved and welcome to the club.

[davew]

Congratulations and welcome to the club

[Preston Pardus]

Thanks guys, it's an honor to be selected! Means a lot to me to read the very kind things that were said by fellow competitors and close friends!

[Danny Steyn]

Congrats Preston - Absolutely deserved. Phenomenal rise to the top. And exactly what the class needs. Young composed wheelman making our class look cool and attractive to other kids. The youth will keep our class growing. 

[MPR22]

Congrats to P$.  The young man is so fun to hang around even old dogs like Danny love him. He is so composed and mature he has to remind me he is sub 21 almost every weekend.  

[Johnny D]

Congrats Chris !!

 

 

Spirit of Mazda: Chris Haldeman

 

Spec Miata racer and prep shop owner isn’t just fast, he also works hard to keep everyone happy

 

Chris Haldeman’s racing chops aren’t in question – he scored the pole in the largest Spec Miata field in history at the 2017 SCCA National Championship Runoffs at Indianapolis and finished fourth in the race. But being fast isn’t enough to say one has the Spirit of Mazda. Being fast and selfless? That’s the sort of thing that earns someone recognition.

 

“He’ll stay up until midnight working on everybody’s car to make sure everyone is ready for the race the next day,” explains Deriann Taylor, whose Spec Miata Haldeman’s X-Factor Racing preps. “He’ll put everyone else before himself so that what they need to get done, gets done.”

 

Yes, Haldeman is in the business of making racers happy. But it goes beyond that – Haldeman is always happy to lend a hand whether someone’s paying him or not.

 

“Pretty much any time you ask him a question – by text, telephone or even a PM on Facebook, he’s always willing to answer any questions and help,” says Derrick Ambrose, an SCCA Touring 4 racer and owner of CorkSport Mazda Performance. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not related to a specific part or something you bought from him, he’s just willing to help. Another example of that was at Indy during the test days…he was behind me or a couple of cars back and he noticed something dripping from under my Mazda3, so he sent one of his guys over to tell me I was leaking stuff. It turns out it was just my air conditioning; but it was one of those, ‘Go check on him and make sure he’s alright.’”

 

Ambrose has been getting engines from him since 2014, and notes that he was willing to try something different and build him a B-Spec engine when a lot of engine builders shied away from it. And a lot of people that have had X-Factor build engines sing Haldeman’s praises. That speaks to his technical prowess.

 

“One thing about him that’s super impressive is you can tell him a noise the car is making, just a tiny noise, and he’ll know exactly what is wrong with the car,” says Taylor. “Any type of noise – ‘My car was doing this, in this corner, in this gear’ – and he’ll know exactly what it is. Everyone will just be baffled. And that’s exactly what is wrong with the car every time. He’s a Miata genius.”

 

Taylor also speaks to his coaching skills and unique style: “He definitely gives you a lot of tough love, which I think a racer needs. A lot of people will be super nice about it and tell you, ‘Maybe you should try this…’ Not him. ‘You need to do this, you need to do it here, you need to do it now and you need to do it just like I said.’ He tells you what you need to hear,” she laughs.

 

In other words, he seeks to get from others what he delivers himself: Flawless Execution, one of the basic tenets of The Spirit of Mazda. For that and his Tomoiku – learning and teaching each other for mutual growth and success – Chris Haldeman is the Spirit of Mazda winner for October.

[chris haldeman]

Thanks Jonny!! It is an honor to be chosen for this award!

[Tom Hampton]

NO ONE deserves it more.  full stop. 

[Danica Davison]

Congrats Chris! Well deserved bud!

[Jim Drago]

Congratulations Chris!

Jim

[Mike Collins]

Congratulations.....

[davew]

WAY TO GO CHRIS, welcome to the club

[Mark]

An excellent choice Mazda. Congrats Chris!

 

[Craig Berry]

Very sharp and knowledgeable! Congrats Chris, well deserved!

[Caveman-kwebb99]

Best spirit winner yet Imo... Spend countless hours on my esr car when esr was having problems diagnosing at the track, had my car running in the morn for June Sprints! We need more crazy Texans like this one!!!!

[TylerQuance]

Congratulations Chris. Thank you for making Spec Miata what it is in Texas and beyond.

[VKicera]

Congratulations Chris !!!    very well deserved and earned. We know you are really a Pennsylvania guy and that's where you learned it !

Merry Christmas to you and your family

[chris haldeman]

Thanks everybody!!

[Johnny D]

Congrats Blake !!

 

 

Spirit of Mazda: Blake Clements

 

Spec Miata racer and driver coach is the Spirit of Mazda award winner for January

 

There’s no getting around the fact Blake Clements is a fast Spec Miata racer, but it’s what he does off track that has earned him recognition as possessing The Spirit of Mazda. “He’s a really good ambassador for Mazda,” says Tom Fowler, owner of OPM Autosports. “He is heavily involved in Spec Miata both as a driver and as a coach. He’s a very recognized name around the paddock, he’s outgoing, and very passionate about Spec Miata and Mazda racing; and he’s also very fast. We enjoy having him as one of our members and one of our customers because he does run up front and he represents us very well.

 

“He also goes out of his way to work with a lot of our people that are new to tracks or new to racing, and he does video and data with them. He does a lot of coaching – he coaches for myself, he coaches for X-Factor racing,” Fowler continues. “I think at the Sebring Majors he had eight or nine customers he was coaching, all Spec Miata drivers. We had a couple of new guys that had never run Sebring before, and Blake will go out of his way to do some lead-follow with them on the first test day, look at some of their data ,videos and help them with some reference points. He’s busy doing his own racing and data and working on setup with me, but he goes out of his way to help the new people.”

 

Chris Haldeman, owner of X-Factor Racing as well as being the 2017 SCCA National Championship Runoffs polesitter in Spec Miata, credits Clements with much of his own success. Haldeman also says that he doesn’t know anyone that would say they don’t like Clements, although they may not like being passed by him. “I remember when I first came to the class, Blake was already on top of his game,” Haldeman notes. “He would come by on a test day [so fast] he would pull the stickers off the car, and I aspired to race with him. I remember my first win was over him, which made it pretty cool.”

 

Clements does a lot of coaching outside of Spec Miata, in karting and other forms of racing, and he’s constantly trying to get his pupils into Spec Miata. “He is always suggesting Spec Miata as a way for younger people to get into the sport,” says Fowler. “As they move up from whatever they are doing – karts, quarter midgets, whatever – he knows it’s a good step to get into Spec Miata and see how good you are at road racing. It’s a wonderful training ground to see how good you are. He coaches a couple of pro drivers in Pirelli World Challenge and he tries to get them into Spec Miata for more seat time because he knows what good training it is.”

 

 

Based on what his peers say about him, Clements clearly possesses many tenets of The Spirit of Mazda, from Continuous Kaizen to One Mazda. But it’s his Tomoiku – learning and teaching others for mutual growth and success – that stand out over the rest.

 

“He has total dedication to the craft,” says Haldeman. “He’s with my guys at the track, working on making them faster, as late as 10 or 11 o’clock at night trying to get through everyone. He’s fully prepared with binder, track notes, race videos. He has an amazing work ethic.”