By Richard S. James – Nov 13, 2025, 4:53 PM ET
Did you hear the one about the 24 Hours of Le Mans winner and ace prototype sports car driver who took on his first oval in a Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup car?
There’s no punchline here, just an excellent performance by a racer out of his element and loving it, even if it did end in disappointment.
Earl Bamber, driver of the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing V-Series.R in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s headlining GTP class, as well as the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R in the FIA World Endurance Championship, joined the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin for its second visit to half-mile Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. The post-season, non-points race with big prize money, won this year by 2025 MX-5 Cup champion Jeremy Fletcher, has become a favorite of fans and racers.
Bamber took two overall victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in 2015 and ’17 at the wheel of a factory Porsche. This season he has WeatherTech Championship victories alongside Jack Aitken and Frederik Vesti in the six-hour race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans series finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. The MX-5 Cup’s visit to Martinsville for a 100-lap race, along with support from Sonny Whelen and Whelen Engineering, afforded Bamber the chance to pivot a long-held dream of competing in an oval race.
“The intensity on the oval was really hard,” said the 35-year-old New Zealand native, who now makes his home in Tennessee. “The mental level of concentration – even though it’s only the entry level of oval racing – was just really intense because of the amount of time, as a percentage, you spend putting the car on the limit. In [GTP and Hypercar], we’ve got five, 10 seconds on a straight; there it was just two, three seconds then corner, corner. So that was a real challenge. And then the line…especially at Martinsville, the way you shape out the corner is a little bit different to what we’re used to.”
Driving the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Mazda MX-5, Bamber started the race sixth, moved up a position in short order, and was up to third well before the halfway break. The inversion at the break had him back to fifth, but he got hung out and lost a couple of positions before contact with another car put him out of contention.
“I was surprised where we ran, and I was actually really proud of where we ran in that first stage to get third,” he recalled. “I think we had good long-run speed as well. So, I was really happy with how we were running. I was just learning and absorbing every time.
“Second stage, with where we started, maybe I could have done something a bit different, but again, that’s all about that whole learning process. You can’t expect to go in there and win straight away. I sort of got hung out a bit, and then at the end, I think the young kid in the inside just hopped with the wheels, and it just came up into us. So, I sort of got the good of oval racing and also the bad of oval racing there. But all in all, it was just a great experience.”
Competing in the race left him wanting more. RACER caught him just after he returned from dinner with a teammate, who also happens to have won a Formula 1 world championship, ahead of the WEC finale in Bahrain. There they talked about racing MX-5 Cup at St. Petersburg. It points to a deeper respect for Mazda’s ultra-competitive one-make series within the IMSA paddock.
“All of us watch the MX-5 Cup races at IMSA every weekend when we’re in the trucks,” said Bamber. “I think it’s some of the best racing that IMSA’s got, to be honest.
“It was just such a welcoming paddock as well. At Martinsville, everyone was super nice – drivers, everyone at Mazda, the teams – it was just a great atmosphere. And you just think, ‘Well, this is the heart and soul of what motor racing is all about,’ if you know what I mean. So, if there’s a young guy out there, or even a gentleman racer who’s looking for that entry-level, pure motorsport, I think it’s just a great place to be. And to be on the IMSA calendar, learn the tracks, get involved with the right people and get spotted – because if you do a great job, I think you will get spotted by the right people.”
Will Bamber be back? Well, he is free on the St. Pete weekend…
- 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 2026 season gets underway on the Daytona International Speedway road course with double-header action on Jan. 22-23. After that, it’s a pair of races on the streets of St. Petersburg, Feb. 28-March 1, with five more double-headers to follow. Check out the full 2026 schedule, plus find all the latest series news, at mx-5cup.com.