By: Andrew Crask June 28, 2018 4:56 AM Spec Miata specialist grew from fun-loving humble beginnings As a prep shop, Old Dogs Racing happened kind of by accident, explains Mark Gibbons, who with partner John Watson runs the Spec Miata specialist. Track days turned into racing, racing turned into a small shop to keep his and his buddies’ cars going, which turned into a business.“We started doing some track days with our street cars – Corvettes and Mustangs and things of that nature,” says Gibbons. “A friend of mine said, ‘Why don’t you drive one of my Miatas and see what you think?’ Going from 150mph to 100 is a big difference, but he said, ‘Going through the corners, you’re going to be going a lot faster.’ So I jumped in the Miata and I fell in love with the car. And the cost of running the Miata vs. a Corvette or a Mustang really made me think about doing this as a sport and creating a race team amongst our friends.“Once we started doing that, I was bringing my cars to some different prep shops and I was not at all happy with the quality of work I was receiving for the cost. Therefore I opened my own shop to do the work on our own vehicles. People started seeing the prep on our cars, where we were going to the track and not having breakdowns and mechanical failures, and it just caught on from that.”Now, aside from their personal cars, Old Dogs takes care of 14 customer cars with the help of John Thomason and Woody – “Just Woody,” says Gibbons. The shop has four ’02 and two ’99 Spec Miatas that it rents. Being based in Florida, they have a lot of customers coming from up north to run the winter races in January and February. The shop also builds cars. Old Dogs races primarily with NASA and SCCA, and Gibbons is pretty proud of some NASA races he’s won. But it’s not just “old dogs” running out of the shop. The team has welcomed several new, young drivers coming out of karts.