Simon! Welcome back!

Good job on the schooling, keep it up, and make it your first priority, and who knows, you might end up being the cheif aero guy for the Renault F1 team or something!

On the ITR thing. ITR is ITS, but faster. Same ruleset to the letter, except the wheel widths allowed are wider.

Your Miata is an ITA car, except for the seam welding. To my knowledge, seam welding is allowed in classes like DP and BP, but the other mods allowed there are pretty crazy too. Your car could run there, theoretically, but it would be far off the pace, I'd imagine.

The classes are new though, so turnouts are low. You'd be far more likely to trophy there than in IT, LOL.

Not that I'm recommneding that....

You need to decide what your longer term goals are. If you just want to go to school and get your comp lic, then any logbooked car would do, and the ultimate legality isn't an issue. However, if you need to invenst time and funds to get the logbook (for your Miata), then think carefully, as the seam welding will be a sales killer down the road. Impossible to undo ...it would cost more than the car is worth.

If you want to do some racing, look around at cars for sale...in the long run, you can buy a built car for pennies of the original build cost, then sell it later for a large percentage of what you paid for it. Choose a car thats reliable, safe, and easy on parts. That could be a Golf, or any of a number of Hondas or Mazda products. There are lots of great deals out there for pretty cheap. I know coming up with the funds to purchase it is tough, but in the long run, it's much cheaper.

Good luck, and don't be a stranger. See you at the ARRC!