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Kenton Koch – Moving Up With Mazda

Kenton Koch at speed in the Mazda MX-5 Cup racecar.  [Photo by Jack Webster]

By Eddie LePine and Jack Webster

Update 10/2/14: Kenton Koch secures the 2014 championship in the first of two Mazda MX-5 races held at Road Atlanta. Kenton started from pole and finished 4th in race one on Thursday and is on pole for Friday’s race two.
Twenty year old Kenton Koch, who hails from California, has been making quite a stir in racing since he started with karting at the young age of 9. Recently, with the support of Skip Barber and MAZDASPEED, Kenton has been making quite the name for himself as he moves up the rungs of the Mazda Ladder program.

For example, in 2012 he was the MAZDASPEED Challenge Champion, with an astounding 17 wins, 2 seconds and 1 third in a total of 20 races. For Kenton, finishing third was having a bad day! Obviously, he won the championship that year.

Kenton Koch posing by his Mazda MX-5 at Road America.  [photo by Jack Webster]

Kenton Koch posing by his Mazda MX-5 at Road America. [photo by Jack Webster]

In 2013, following up with his previous season’s success, Kenton won the Skip Barber Pro Challenge with 9 wins out of 11 races, setting 5 track records in the process. Once again, he was series champion.

So far in 2014, he has 6 wins out of 10 races in the MAZDA MX-5 Cup presented by BF Goodrich, and is looking to wrap up the championship this weekend at Road Atlanta. Oh, and by the way, in 2014 he set another 3 track records.

Keep in mind, these results for Kenton the past three seasons have been in identically prepared, spec Mazda racers. The difference? The driver.

What’s next for the very quick Kenton Koch? Only time will tell, but as he will tell you, he would be nowhere without the support of Skip Barber and the Mazda Ladder program for up and coming drivers. For Kenton Koch is a very talented driver who does not have the advantage of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Every ride he has had in racing has been earned and made possible by sacrifice by his friends and family – a rarity in these days.

Instituted by Mazda in 2007, the ladder program was designed to help drivers with talent who lacked funding to pursue a motorsports career. Mazda’s goal was to do something positive for the racing industry, and the program has been extremely successful. Mazda’s Director of Motorsports John Doonan’s philosophy is that if you want to race to the top, you should start with Mazda and they will help you get to there.

Mazda’s continuing support of young drivers like Kenton Koch is refreshing in a sport where far too often, great potential talent is kept from succeeding due to lack of proper funding. With support like this from Mazda, we are likely to see the next American World Champion or Le Mans winner sooner rather than later.

As evident by the Proactiv Mazdaspeed prototype which is running a production based diesel engine against purebred racing engines in the IMSA TUDOR series, Mazda is always at the forefront of racing, always pushing, always improving, always willing to take the hard path forward, not the easy way. We know that it is only a matter of time before the Proactiv Mazdaspeed Diesel wins a TUDOR race, just as we know that it is only a matter of time (most likely a short matter of time) before Kenton Koch will become a household name in racing.

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