I took it to a hillclimb track fun day today. There were no red SAABs in evidence, only golf cabriolets and a distinct shortage of Elises and VX220s.
The Mazda is quite grippy, 205 width 16" tyres seem to help. LSD stops it spinning all the power off on the inside wheel at the hairpins. It has nice weighty and reasonably direct steering. The brakes are quite effective although they have a much stronger front bias than I expected. Perhaps it's because I am used to the BX which didn't really dive on hard braking, it just seemed to stop very quickly usually causing injury to passengers.
It seems to be quite forgiving, I gave myself a couple of frights on the first run when I hit dusty parts of the track but as I did more runs I learned that I was well within the limits of the car really.
I think I managed 7 runs up the hill. I haven't burned off a significant amount of rubber, but I have used a fair bit of petrol.
I've had a smashing day and I think I managed not to get sunburn.