At the second time of trying, 18-year-old Noah Harmon (above) won the Mazda MX-5 Cup Scholarship Shootout’s top prize: a fully funded ride for the 2025 season.
To get to this point, Harmon spent his 2024 season seat time wisely to include participating in three Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin rounds, totaling six races. The move allowed him to retain his eligibility status, but also become more familiar with the driving nuances of the Mazda MX-5 Cup race car.
“Last year, I didn’t know what to expect coming into the Shootout. This year, I was much more familiar with the car,” says Harmon.
His racing trajectory has so far been less typical than those of his peers. Harmon was born in Toronto, Ont., but was raised from around the age of four in the Orlando, Fla., area. He enjoyed watching racing on TV with his father, and they made the occasional hour-plus journey to Daytona International Speedway to attend the Rolex 24 and the Daytona 500.
“At the end of 2019, my dad and I went to drive some rental karts, and that was the beginning,” Harmon recalls. “We went to look at proper racing karts and on my 14th birthday, I drove a real kart for the first time.”
Despite coming into the karting scene twice as old as many who are competitive at this stage in their careers, Harmon fell into the groove very quickly.
“I raced karts from 2020 to 2021, and I did well in the state of Florida,” says Harmon. “I did some national stuff, too, and I would run decent. I wasn’t one of the guys who would be at the front, but I went to Super Nats in Las Vegas and did OK.”
The transition to race cars came after only two seasons of karting.
“We got to know some people in racing, and I did the Lucas Oil Racing School,” he recalls. “I really fell in love with the race cars, so I did both of their racing schools and then did their two-race winter series in the beginning 2022.”
Along the way Harmon crossed paths with a few other MX-5 Cup rising stars such as Jeremy Fletcher, Westin Workman and Thomas Annunziata. It was also during this time that Harmon met Aaron Nash of Crucial Motorsports, who recommended that he take a look at racing Mazdas, beginning with Spec Miata, which he did in 2023 with Mazda powerhouse BSI.
For the 2024 season, Harmon took another step forward, competing in Spec MX-5 with Greenwood Motorsports in addition to the three MX-5 Cup races that netted him an impressive fourth-place finish along with a ninth place during the final round at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
The interesting part is that Harmon has yet to run a full season in any championship and a second-place finish in the Spec MX-5 class at the 2024 SCCA National Championship Runoffs is his best result so far. So, did he feel like the underdog when he came to the Scholarship Shootout this year?
“I felt like I definitely had a lot of experience going into this year’s Shootout with my knowledge of the MX-5 Cup car, so I didn’t feel like an underdog in that respect. I felt very prepared for the Shootout this year,” he explains. “Last year was very much like I had no idea what I was getting into. It’s a wild and awesome event, but it is super stressful to go into it, and this year I definitely knew what to expect, which helped”
Embarking on his first full season in a single championship presents Harmon with a challenge he has yet to deal with.
“I think representing Mazda this year in MX-5 Cup and being the Shootout winner and just getting to do a full season is gonna be a big, big deal,” he muses. “I mean, I really haven’t run a full season where every race matters. I do a lot of race weekends. It’s just never a part of a single championship. Like, for Spec MX-5, I ran four weekends this year, but I did a bunch of random Spec Miata stuff at the same time. So, I really haven’t had to put a full season together like that before. I think that’s really going to be a good experience.”
At the moment, Harmon is just trying to process it all. Like so many Shootout Scholarship winners before him, his short-term career path has taken a very sudden and positive turn.
“After the Shootout, my dad and I were just super happy,” says Harmon. “I mean, he was crying because it meant everything that the last three years has been about trying to win it. So, it was just a lot of stress and expectation for us to know we had a good shot at it this year and it meant so much. I have to also thank Bob and Donna Mueller of Street Side Classics for their support, because I think just getting time in the MX-5 Cup car was the biggest thing — getting time testing in it this year and doing some races.”
Next January, Harmon and his dad will once again make the trip to Daytona International Speedway, only this time, he’ll be much closer to that dream of being a full-time sports car racer.
- All Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin races are streamed live on RACER.com and archived on The RACER Channel on YouTube. The 2025 action kicks off with the always-unmissable Daytona International Speedway doubleheader on Thursday, Jan. 23 and Friday, Jan. 24. And for all the latest series news, head to mx-5cup.com.
