Mazda MX-5 RF
Our RF shone brightly at Rockingham, but also revealed one or two areas for improvement
MY COLLEAGUES HAD ALREADY driven the RF at an earlier evo Rockingham track evening and, as seems to be a recurring theme with this car, returned full of praise. The MX-5 had been easy on its tyres and brakes, and the biddable chassis apparently made it as fun for more experienced drivers as it was for those with a little less track-work under their belts.
With another Rockingham date in the diary, it was the perfect time to have a go myself. I’ve spent plenty of time behind the wheel of MX-5S but the circuit itself was new to me, so I built up the pace gradually while I figured out the lines and braking points. The RF’S great for this sort of thing, with keen, linear responses and the useful safety net of a stability control system that remains fairly unintrusive until things actually go awry.
It’s by no means the quickest car in a straight line, but there’s just enough oomph that on a relatively twisty circuit you’re not having to constantly survey your mirrors for quicker traffic. It helps that the RF drives predictably up to its grip limits, too, so you feel confident carrying high corner speeds.
The highest of all are at the banked first turn, which is taken at between 90 and 100mph in the RF and is just bumpy enough that the aforementioned stability control felt the need to nibble at the brakes a couple of times. The rest of the circuit is a lot of fun, with flowing sweepers and gentle undulations through which you feel the RF working its tyres. If I were to take the RF on track more often, though, I’d make a few changes. The first (and most important, since it would improve the on-road experience too) would be the substitution of a pair of bucket seats, in lieu of the extra couple of limbs I needed to brace myself most of the way around the track as I slid about in the unsupportive leather seats.
Next would be a set of uprated brake pads and perhaps some hightemperature fluid to improve pedal feel just a tad after repeated lapping. Only after those two upgrades would I look into ways of curtailing the MX-5’S rolypoly body movements, which are fine in quick sweepers but make the car feel a little imprecise and wallowy in slower corners, such as Rockingham’s hairpins.
The RF continues to impress me, though, and played its retractable roof party trick to perfection as the heavens opened the minute on-track activity stopped. Fresh from batting around the circuit as an open-topped targa, it transformed into a good-natured coupe for the journey home.