During ASPHALT MEDIA Thursday Night Thunder on January 18th, 2024, Marty Cmejla was running 2nd in the Global Mazda MX5 Cup race at South Boston Speedway. It was Race 2 for the night. All of a sudden on Lap 18, Cmejla's Mazda started smoking. WHY was the car smoking? What happened?

Robbie Devore, owner of ASPHALT MEDIA, told the drivers before the race that the first 20 laps of the race would go green. Cmejla started 3rd and quickly found his way around Jonathan Green to get to 2nd. He would sit 2nd, up until Lap 18 when problems would begin.

On the ASPHALT MEDIA broadcast, Devore was focused on a battle inside of the Top 10. So, the smoking engine wasn't caught on camera. It wasn't until the caution came out at Lap 20 (saving Cmejla), that Robbie showed a quick glimpse of Cmejla. It was him coming down pit road with a smoking engine. Robbie noticed it and did make a comment, but never really questioned it, likely assuming that he just crashed.

In the chat, driver Yahir Rodriguez asked, "Is that Cmejla smoking?"
Indeed it was.

Well what exactly caused this? The idea gearing at South Boston Speedway is to shift up into 3rd gear at the middle portion of each straightaway. Cmejla didn't know this. He would keep the Mazda in 2nd, letting the engine hit the limiter, and then by the time the corner came, he didn't feel like he needed to upshift.

In reality, upshifting into 3rd gear makes a difference with the Mazdas. There is a little bit of draft that comes off the cars. And, downshifting into 2nd about 1/3 of the way into each turn can give extra rotation that the car needs to get faster corners. It wasn't until the 2nd to last caution Cmejla figured this out.

But, to cause the smoke, Cmejla was experimenting.
"I was like, maybe I should try upshifting into 3rd gear, and then see what happens, so I did."

On Lap 17, Cmejla began this process. But, due to his lack of experience with the Mazdas, he made a mistake. In Turns 1 and 2 on Lap 18, he downshifted TOO FAR and go into 1st gear. "I thought my downshift into 2nd didn't even register, so when I pressed my paddle shifter again, it went to 1st as the first to 2nd DID register." Cmejla uses the paddle shifters on  his wheel for shifting.

Instantly the engine over-revved and blew up. Cmejla was hoping for that caution to come out, and it did, just 2 laps later. Cmejla went to the pits from 2nd (unideally) and pit for a fast repair, and took 0 tires to avoid massive track position loss. Cmejla fell back to 6th. It took Cmejla only 2 laps to get back up to 2nd as there was a lot of restart chaos.

"I am glad that that wasn't worse than what it could have been," Cmejla said. As we said earlier, later in the race Cmejla tried the 3rd to 2nd gear pattern again, and learned from his "missed-shift" mistake. There it is! Mystery solved.

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Article Created at 8:41 PM 1/19/2024