Gresham Wagner – Syndication Server

Inside MX-5 Cup: Champion Wagner resets and repeats

It took 17 years for the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin to have a repeat champion. But it only took another year for the super-competitive one-make series to have its second repeat winner. With victories at Daytona, Mid-Ohio Sports Car …

With victories at Daytona, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta finale, Gresham Wagner earned his second MX-5 Cup championship in 2024, three years after claiming his first.

“It’s nice to join a small club like that,” said Wagner shortly after the season wrapped up. “More than comparing myself to what other people have done, it was more of a personal achievement to be able to know that I could do it twice. It certainly wasn’t a fluke the first time I did it, but it always feels nice to be able to come back and, especially three years later, show that I can still do it. And to know that I’m still at the top my game, competing with all the new people who’ve come into the series since my first one, makes it special.”

It was one of those new people, second-season driver Jeremy Fletcher, who Wagner had to beat. But there was also a familiar rival in Jared Thomas, the other two-time champ – and so far, the only back-to-back title winner.

In the end, Wagner beat Thomas by only 60 points, with Fletcher 10 markers back in third place.

While Thomas was landing his consecutive championships in 2022 and ’23, 2021 title-winner Wagner struggled with only two wins across two seasons, finishing third, then fifth in the standings. But his performance this year is a story of growth, along with a little bit of a change in attitude.

“I don’t think my speed was ever anything that I questioned,” he said. “Maybe some of the decisions I made on track, some of the factors of luck that came into play, certainly didn’t help. But, yeah, I came in with a bit of a new approach. It still wasn’t a perfect year. I had a couple of incidents through the year and a little bit of misfortune, but so does everyone else. So, I just maximized what I could control and tried to minimize the stuff that I couldn’t.”

That new approach, which Wagner says includes an extra dose of patience, was necessary. In the six seasons that he’s contested the series – and even in the two seasons between his championships – the Mazda MX-5 Cup and the profile of its competitors have evolved.

“A lot of young, talented drivers have come in, more than ever,” Wagner said. “The teams that that have come in, and the teams that have stayed here, have only upped their game over the years. And I think the field is tighter than ever, which leads to a lot more variables, a lot more stuff happening in the races, and a lot more opportunities where your patience or lack thereof can either help you or hurt you.”

That increased level of competitiveness also means no pulling out a gap and running away like he sometimes did in his first championship season, and in years prior, too. Winning an MX-5 Cup race or championship now means fighting in a pack of six, seven, or even 10 cars, pretty much every single lap of every single race.

“There’s just no leeway for anything anymore,” Wagner explained. “You can’t get away with any mistakes, and you also can’t take advantage of certain situations as much as you used to. You’re always racing people. It’s so compact, right? Everybody’s capable of doing the same lap times and achieving the same results. It completely changes how the races develop and how you have to win these.”

But adapt, and win, Wagner did. And he now stands as one of only two people to do it twice. Already in rarefied company, can he make it three? Watch this space in 2025…

• All Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin races are streamed live on RACER.com and archived on The RACER Channel on YouTube. Up next, enjoy live action from the 2024 Mazda MX-5 Cup Shootout, Nov. 11-12, when 12 aspiring racers will vie for a scholarship valued at $150,000 from Mazda to compete in the 2025 Mazda MX-5 Cup season. Plus, find all the latest series news at mx-5cup.com.

Wagner unstoppable in MX-5 Cup Race 2 win at Mid-Ohio

After finishing third in Saturday’s Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by Michelin race, Gresham Wagner (No. 5 McCumbee McAleer Racing) got the job done on Sunday by winning Round Eight. Wagner led a McCumbee McAleer Racing podium sweep that included Jeremy Fletcher (No. 22 McCumbee McAleer Racing) in second and Nate Cicero (No. 83 McCumbee McAleer Racing) in third.

Like Saturday’s race, Wagner started from pole position for the 45-minute, all green flag race. Unlike Saturday’s race, he took a decisive 0.537s victory over Fletcher, his MMR teammate. In doing so, he became the first repeat Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup race winner of the year.

Wagner and two-time Mazda MX-5 Cup Champion Jared Thomas (No. 96 JTR Motorsports Engineering) led a pack of four cars that slowly pulled away from the rest of the field, with Aaron Jeansonne (No. 24 JTR Motorsports Engineering) and Fletcher in third and fourth, respectively. The quartet played the long game, running in that order for 22 laps.

With two laps to go, Fletcher took a look at Jeansonne for third in the Hairpin. Jeansonne’s attempt to defend his spot unfortunately resulted in him hitting his teammate, Thomas, who slid into the gravel trap and became stuck.

The incident gave Wagner more than enough breathing room on the final lap to get his second win of the 2024 Mazda MX-5 Cup season.

“I had a different mindset coming into the last five minutes, of what I could do different from yesterday,” Wagner said. “But that was kind of a moot point because of the incident that happened. I was prepared to have to race them a bit different and pull out some tricks from yesterday and then it kind of just fell in my lap coming to the white flag. That’s not necessarily what you like to see at the end, but I led every lap, I was fast, and I thought I earned that win. I’m happy to get a double podium on the weekend and become the first repeat race winner. Sometimes you have good waves and sometimes you have bad, so it’s good to be riding a wave of good momentum heading into the second half of the season.”

Following the contact between the JTR teammates, Fletcher was able to sneak past Jeansonne and into second. With just a lap and a half left in the race, Fletcher was unable to catch Wagner and challenge him for the win.

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“At the start of the race I had a similar thing happen but the opposite,” Fletcher said of the contact. “Somebody came in kind of late and hit me. I tried to go for a fake out on Aaron [Jeansonne] and he bought it and ended up going too deep and sadly they had contact, but luckily, I stayed clear. I tried to run down Gresham but couldn’t catch him. I can’t thank the McCumbee McAleer guys enough; I mean, we’re 1-2-3! I also want to thank my grandparents the Holster Store, Home Restoration Exchange, Home Decor and More and everyone that’s been able to put me in this position.”

Jeansonne recovered from the incident at the Hairpin and crossed the line in third but was deemed responsible and issued a drive-through penalty. When the drive-through equivalent time was added to the results it dropped Jeansonne to 14th and promoted Cicero to the final podium spot.

“It was a pretty lonely race for a while,” Cicero said. “We had a little gap to the front group, and I had [Nathan] Nicholson behind me but either Connor [Zilisch] spun him or he spun by himself. Connor and I got to working together for a while. We saw Jared [Thomas] get hit by Aaron [Jeansonne] I think, so I knew there was going be a penalty or something and I had to get in front of Connor. There was a little bit of contact, some rough racing, and then he and Weston [Workman] got together in the last corner, so I over-undered them and was able to get third. I’ll take it on a rough weekend.”

Workman (No. 13 BSI Racing) came out the winner of that final corner contact, finishing fourth, the highest of the rookies. Zilisch (No. 72 BSI Racing), who was Saturday’s Mazda MX-5 Cup race winner, finished fifth.

It was a banner weekend for Sally Mott (No. 15 Spark Performance) who captured two 13th-place finishes on the weekend. This earned her a total of $4,000 as the highest finishing female driver in both races. Mott is the 2023 recipient of the Mazda Women in Motorsports Initiative Scholarship, which won her $75,000 toward this MX-5 Cup season.

“I feel like I really had a lot more pace than every other week,” Mott said. “I think I’m really getting comfortable with this car and starting to feel a lot better. It’s like we’re chipping off smaller and smaller amounts now and it’s really about working on racecraft.”

Next up for rounds nine and 10 of the Mazda MX-5 Cup, the series heads back to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for the first time since 2016. The doubleheader takes place July 12 – 13.

Wagner motors to MX-5 Cup race one victory at Road America

Two young rookies-Jonathan Neudorf (No. 55 Hixon Motor Sports) and Nate Cicero(No. 83 McCumbee McAleer Racing) led the large field of Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by BFGoodrich® Tires runners to the green flag at Road America, but when the dust settled and the checkered flag flew, it was a trio of experienced runners who scored the podium bounty in Saturday’s race one.

Using a recipe that included speed, some patience, wily drafting, doses of aggression, and a timely final caution, 2021 Mazda MX-5 Cup Champion Gresham Wagner (No. 5 Spark Performance) converted third on the grid into a race victory as he was followed across the line by 2022 Mazda MX-5 Cup Champion Jared Thomas (No. 96 JTR Motorsports Engineering). Robert Noaker (No. 13 Robert Noaker Racing) continued to make progress in his series return, moving from fifth at the start to take third.

Neudorf led the field to the green flag, but was quickly overtaken for the lead as Cicero took the point after the first tour of the recently-repaved 4-mile circuit set in rural Wisconsin. Neudorf’s day turned for the worse though after side by side contact with Jeremy Fletcher (No. 22 Copeland Motorsports) saw him head to the pits after losing pressure in one of his BFGoodrich tires.

A full-course caution on lap four to recover Thomas Annunziata (No. 10 Hixon Motor Sports) from the Turn One gravel slowed the field behind Gresham, with Cicero giving chase on the lap six restart.

But two laps later, an incident for Andrew Wilson (No. 49 McCumbee McAleer Racing) saw the field return to single file ahead of a lap 12 restart. Several drafting trains traded positions from corner to corner, with Maximilian Opalski (No. 2 Copeland Motorsports) setting the fastest lap of the race as he dueled with a pack that included Cicero, championship leader Aaron Jeansonne (No. 24 JTR Motorsports Engineering), and John Jodoin (No. 39 McCumbee McAleer Racing).

The yellow flew one final time after Hanna Zellers (No. 74 Hixon Motor Sports) and Joey Rainey (No. 30 Robert Noaker Racing) tangled, giving Wagner the rare chance to breathe easy on the final lap of a Mazda MX-5 Cup race.

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“Experience I think plays a role and knowing how these races usually pan out,” said the former series champion. “I mean, this place is unique, there’s kind of a rhythm to how the races go. I also think Nate [Cicero] was right there, he didn’t fall off. He just made one mistake, and that’s all it could take at a place like this, where the draft can eat you up. Jared [Thomas] was really quick too, he was willing to work with me for a large part of that race. Fortunately for me, the yellow came out, because I think it would have gotten a bit dicey there at the end, but I’m sure we’ll have a tougher race this afternoon- everyone learns something so they’ll come back stronger.”

Thomas, who utilized his significant prize package from Mazda for his 2022 championship to grow the JTR Motorsports program, was happy to put his experience to use on the way to second.

“We had so many cautions today and that didn’t really let the race play out,” said Thomas. “But Nate [Cicero] was fast definitely and could have been on the podium if that last caution didn’t come out. But this is one of those places where thinking pretty far ahead can get you some positions. So, I’d say the experience definitely helps— but we had a good good car today and I’m looking forward to the second race later. I think it was a different race than we are used to at Road America, but it was definitely exciting.”

Noaker, who landed himself in the Guinness Book of World Records with his MX-5 Cup race victory at all of 14 years old in 2018, has seen his fortunes continue to improve in his 2023 return to the series.

“This track is definitely one you have to have the knowledge of how the draft works, and who you’re around that’ll help you—and who won’t,” said Noaker. “But with the repave here you kind of have one real good groove around the track, and then everywhere off of that groove is not very good right now. In years past, you could go two wide through basically any turn you want, but now you can’t really do that. Right now, everyone’s huddled up on the inside of the track because you can’t do anything otherwise. I was hoping it would work out, but it just didn’t. It was fun out there though. I just want to thank Velocity Mazda, Slipstream Performance, and Noaker Racing. We’ve been getting better and better throughout the year and it feels like we are getting closer to a win again”

The rookie runners—there are 13 of them in the Road America field—will look to turn the tide on the veterans when the series stages race two later on Saturday. The race will be streamed live on RACER.com at 3:45 p.m. ET.