If there’s one thing Bryce Cornet wants more than anything else this Christmas, it’s a full-season ride in the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by Michelin. He didn’t spend much time behind the wheel in 2024, but he has been making sure he ends up on Santa’s ‘nice’ list.

Cornet’s dream of a professional racing career has been thrown many curveballs. When he was 15, he was diagnosed with a heart condition just as he was advancing from karts to open-wheel cars. Everything racing related had to put on hold while he and his family focused on his health.

“I was 15, sitting in a high school class and started to have severe heart palpitations, like almost passing out,” Cornet recalled. “I called my mom and said ‘I think I'm having a heart attack… I don't know what’s going on!’ When we got to the hospital we ran an EKG and said, ‘you have Wolff-Parkinson-White.’ I went through two catheter ablations, where they basically go through blood vessels to your heart and cauterize tissue causing the arrythmia.”

Funds his parents were putting toward his racing career were instantly diverted to his medical care.

Back in the racing game, just when it seemed like he was about to get the boost he needed, fate intervened again. The Mazda Road to Indy seemed like his best shot to go pro and he was dominating the Formula Mazda ranks in SCCA.  In 2018, after winning a SCCA National Championship, he was invited to the Road to Indy Shootout, but didn’t end up making the final cut. As it turned out, that was the last year of the Road to Indy, as Mazda shifted its Shootout program to focus on sportscars and the Road to 24.

Undeterred, Cornet did a handful of Spec MX-5 races the following year, as funds allowed, and qualified again for the 2019 Shootout but found no luck in securing the scholarship. He was invited back in 2021 and this time he earned the runner-up scholarship valued at $75,000.

With the scholarship in hand, Cornet started the 2022 MX-5 Cup season with a Hard Charger award at Daytona that would set the pace for a respectable rookie season. He believed he finally had the funding for a full season of MX-5 Cup racing, but his progress was cut short. He would use his own savings to compete in what would be his final race of 2022 at VIR.

“I had funding lined up, and the funding fell through last minute,” Cornet said. “It left me hanging toward the end of the year. The situation was magnified when I blew an engine at VIR while running in the top three. Things never aligned which really set me back for a return in 2023.”

Cornet’s determination to compete in MX-5 Cup was not extinguished. Since 2022, he has competed in a handful of races. When not in the driver’s seat, he’s behind the scenes, coaching drivers for Spark Performance and staying inside the MX-5 Cup orbit.

“There are plenty of drivers with budget constraints just like me,” he explained. “Outside of professional racing, I often don't even charge for coaching. I see it as a time for networking and helping others, because I know how that feels: when you don’t have the budget, but you need the support.”

Cornet doesn’t just help fellow racers; he aims to help everyone affected by a congenital heart issue via his work with the American Heart Association.

“Along with my involvement with the Joe Abate Charitable Foundation, American Heart Association, and other heart health organizations, I hope that sharing my heart health journey can be beneficial to others. In addition to supporting heart health advocacy as a whole, accessible pre-adolescent heart health assessments are a specific area of focus for me. My yearly physicals and heart health check-ups regularly include an EKG. In some situations, an EKG is not covered by insurance. It is important for families to have access to no-cost or low-cost EKGs.”

Racing in MX-5 Cup could be an excellent platform to amplify Cornet’s message about heart health, but only if he can finally secure that full-season sponsorship. But why does Cornet want it to be MX-5 Cup?

“The talent that you're competing against is top tier,” Cornet replied. “At times, you are even racing against drivers from NASCAR, Indy Car, etc. I feel like I have unfinished business in this series. I'm doing everything I can to make a full season and earn a championship title.”

Bryce Cornet is definitely on the ‘nice list’ this year and he’s hoping that a Sponsorship Santa will gift him with the opportunity to compete in the full 2025 Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup season.

If you would like to know more about Bryce’s story, check out this short documentary:

https://youtu.be/KELLqgWqyWw?si=SnP9J87JFQt_x6bH