RX8Club.com - 2018 IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship Season Discussion

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Quote:

Originally Posted by swoope (Post 4849258)

As always i will be at the track on friday.. weather permitting..

have a few friends with me.. cocktails will be involved..

beers :beer:

We are headed over on Saturday, you going to be around then as well?

24 Hour Entry List

https://www.imsa.com/news/012018/rol...six-continents

Here is pdf of entry list, and list of entrants by country.

whaaaaat?! No Guatemala?!
damn.
maybe one of these years my people will learn how to drive race cars. :lol:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jedi54 (Post 4849703)

whaaaaat?! No Guatemala?!
damn.
maybe one of these years my people will learn how to drive race cars. :lol:

Just get as rich as Jackie Chan and then you can field your own team with a driver from your native heritage country.

note to self: start buying PowerBall tickets.

is it race time yet???

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jedi54 (Post 4849750)

note to self: start buying PowerBall tickets.

is it race time yet???

Getting close! I really hope this is a successful season for Mazda.

Looks like a nice facility with some cool cars Blackmount, congratulations on the new position!

here's a cool tech walk through courtesy of Mazda Motorsports Chief John Doonan.

Mazda Team Joest optimistic ahead of Rolex 24

Quote:

Directors and drivers in Mazda Team Joest are positive that the progress and reliability the relatively new squad showed in the Roar Before the 24 test suggests they can land a strong result this weekend at Daytona.

Mazda, which has won its class at Daytona 23 times, pulled out of the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar championship three races early, in order to have its RT24-Ps re-engineered by new partner, Joest Racing, for 2018. The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona marks the first race since their collaboration.

John Doonan, director of Mazda Motorsports NA, said: “Mazda Team Joest represents a complete rethink of our Prototype program. As a result, the expectations of success are very high, and there is a singular focus among everyone that we are here to do one thing and one thing only.

“It all starts with execution. If we have everything prepared – which I know we do – before we pull into the garage at Daytona, we can execute our plan without having to spend a lot of time worrying about what everyone else does. If making it to the end of the 24 Hours puts us on the podium, that’s a great way to kick off Mazda Team Joest.”

Ralf Juettner, managing director of the team, stated: “We hope to get into a good rhythm during the race, and be around the leading group until the end of the 24 hours – and hopefully, we are in a good position to fight in the final hours. Our driver lineups are strong and come with a lot of endurance racing experience and together with the team’s experience, this should give us the chance to take the fight to the obviously very strong competitors.”

The #55 Mazda of Jonathan Bomarito, Harry Tincknell and endurance “third man”, IndyCar rising star Spencer Pigot, has prequalified eighth fastest, and all three were optimistic of a strong showing this weekend.
Bomarito pointed out that both cars “ran perfectly in the final session,” and that the team pitstop drill is slick, while Tincknell said: “Even in the final session we made improvements in our setup. We are confident we can have a good clean race, running near the front and having no problems as well. As we all know in endurance racing reliability is huge so we are fantastic on that side.”

Pigot, meanwhile, said: “It’s definitely been nice to see the improvements we’ve made in the team on lots of different fronts from last season.”

The #77 Mazda will be piloted fulltime by Tristan Nunez and Olivier Jarvis and they will be joined by Rene Rast at Daytona.

Jarvis, a three-time Le Mans podium finisher in Joest’s Audi R18s and LMP2-class winner at Le Mans last year with Jackie Chan DC Racing, commented: “This is probably the most competitive field I’ve ever seen at Daytona. This year if you want to win it, you have to get everything right.

“Everyone on the team is working well together, and if we can keep that going for the race we’ll be in a real good position.”

Rast, a class winner at Daytona in 2012, and the reigning DTM champion said: “Mazda Team Joest is still a very new team, but every day that we have worked together has brought us forward. The RT-24P is already much quicker compared to last year. We made big improvements over the winter, and at the Roar, our number one goal was to find a good setup for all conditions – daylight and night, and I think we managed that quite well.”

https://www.motorsport.com/imsa/news...lex-24-998717/

More Daytona coverage, hope you guys don't mind. :cool:

Here's a few notes I found interesting

The pair of Mazda RT24-Ps have been trimmed down to IMSA’s newly permitted minimum weight of 915kg, according to Joest Racing Managing Director Ralf Juttner. The Mazdas were given a 15kg weight reduction as part of series of Balance of Performance adjustments to the Multimatic-built cars, which had been overweight in its previous form last year. (all other cars are running 930-940kgs)
Porsche celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first overall win at the Rolex 24 this weekend.
The German manufacturer holds a record 22 overall wins in the race, the most recent coming in 2010 with Action Express Racing’s Porsche-powered Riley DP. Remarkably, Porsche has a 70 percent class win record, totaling 78 class victories in the Florida endurance classic. (holy crap that's one hell of a winning record)
The Rolex 24 again sees a massive logistic undertaking for Continental Tire, which has brought more than 8,500 tires to the track, four times more than any other race weekend. It’s required 16 transporters and a staff of 70 employees to help process the tires and service all IMSA teams.
At peak demand, 200 tires can be processed by Continental staff within an hour. Each tire takes roughly two minutes to dismount, mount, set pressure and balance. (emphasis mine) :Eyecrazy:

Daytona Wednesday Notebook ? Sportscar365

Well, practices were done this morning and qualifying is in the books!
Mazda shocked everyone with the fastest lap time this morning but it looks like the Cadillacs showed everyone up again and will take the pole position.

#55 Mazda qualified 9th coming in .550 seconds behind the leader.
The No. 77 Mazda RT24-P also did not set a time after Mazda Team Joest engineers found a data irregularity prior to qualifying.
Let's hope it's nothing major.

I dont care too much for starting positions in a 24 hour race and just hope they can find a little speed and keep pace.

#77 undergoing an engine change tonight...

While I'm not the kind of rotard to post "durr put a rotary in it!" all over Mazda Motorsport's facebook page, they would at least finish an endurance race if they used one.

#77 was on track this morning for the final practice and showed good speed.
How did the #55 do you ask? Well, it didn't even go out on track because it too was undergoing an engine replacement. *insert Homer Simpson 'd'oh!' meme?*

I guess it's better they deal with issues now than in the race but still not good news for the team

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jedi54 (Post 4850421)

Hard to say Jedi, perhaps they were running engines that had been used in testing up until now and wanted to put fresh units in for the event?:suspect:

while I like the idea of a fresh motor, most teams wouldn't want an untested engine going in before an endurance race I would think.

found a quote from Doonan:

John Doonan, director of Mazda Motorsports, explained that the engine change was similar to the one performed on the team's No.77 DPi on Thursday.
"We weren't happy with some things we saw on the data, so we want to be as cautious as we can," Doonan said. "Our goal is for Sunday afternoon, to be competing there at the end, so we are taking no chances. We've had a strong pace – P1 in opening practice and P4 this morning. That's something we're really proud of."

They won't say what, but they think they found the cause
“We basically had a new engine broken in,” Doonan told Sportscar365. “It feels great and the data looks fantastic and we identified the area of concern. It changed my whole level of confidence once we identified it."

Seeing as how 55 already had an engine change during the Daytona test, unless Joest ran a 24 hour test since then, I'm feeling pessimistic.

I've been posting this everywhere, but does no one really remember how flakey this engine was with Dyson Racing in ALMS? And they weren't amateurs like everyone claims Speedsource was.

Oh, I haven't forgotten.
I'm cautiously optimistic but given the history of that motor, I think it's strengths lie in sprint races, not Enduros.

Let's hope Joest can pull a rabbit out of their hat and shock everyone.
Or maybe the Cadillac will all crash into each other. :wink2:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jedi54 (Post 4850494)

Or maybe the Cadillac will all crash into each other. :wink2:

that would be epic:)

Hope they have it sorted out, but I don't have great confidence in this engine running close to full-out over 24 hours. I will be watching with my fingers crossed.

watching the live stream on my phone since I'm not home.
what the heck is stuck to the window of the #55?

and we're OFF!!!!!!

SHIT!
contact already.
ugh.
hopefully the car is fine.

And now that #55 is dragging its way around the track with no left front wheel immediately after a pit stop.

What is wrong with the pit crew for Mazda?
All last year, they would ruin a perfectly competitive race, and here we are, barely 1 hour in, and they forget to tighten a wheel in the biggest race of the year.

Is there a way to switch the the #77 video feed?
I hate that imsa.com only seems to lock you into the #55 feed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bladecutter (Post 4850528)

All last year, they would ruin a perfectly competitive race, and here we are, barely 1 hour in, and they forget to tighten a wheel in the biggest race of the year.

Totally different crew. Getting rid of them would make the car competitive, right? :uh: Like the TV guy said this is very un-Joest like.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4745/...aa7cea5d_o.jpg

Edit: forgot the other punchline
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4652/...f0edd474_o.png

And now the #77 is being pushed down pit lane.
No idea what happened there.