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Bomarito back in the lead!
fuel strategy could come into play here with all the prototypes needing one more fill up to finish the race BUT if it rains, Cadillac might be able to make it on fuel and could leap frog everyone if they have to go in for gas.
man they look strong.
I laughed at JPM already bitching about Mazda's speed. Acura usually at least waits until the race is over before they start their complaining.
45 minutes to go, waiting to see the leaders go diving into the pits for their final stop.
speaking of stops, crazy how short Nunez's stint was but can't blame the 77 Team for that one, Jarvis has been a BEAST today, I'd want him back in the car as well.
It was a great race. And a great ending. Nice to see Mazda out front and everything going well. No more gremlins....looking forward to a winning season
thanks gwilliams!
some more coverage from yesterdays's win at Daytona! (wow, how long as it been since we've said those words)
Tincknell, Bomarito Lead Mazda 1-2 in Daytona
Multimatic-run Mazdas score commanding 1-2 finish in IMSA’s return to racing… by John Dagys
Man that car looks good in Victory Lane.
Mazda has scored a commanding victory in IMSA’s return to racing, with the Multimatic-run squad claiming a 1-2 sweep in Saturday’s WeatherTech 240 at Daytona.
Harry Tincknell took the No. 55 Mazda RT24-P to a 10.168-second win over the sister No. 77 entry of Oliver Jarvis in the two-hour and 40-minute wet-turned-dry race, which ran caution free despite a delayed start due to weather.
The No. 55 Mazda DPi, in the hands of Jonathan Bomarito, took over the lead at the halfway mark from the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R, which was one of two DPis to effectively save a pit stop by having started on Michelin slicks.
Gabby Chaves, a last-minute fill-in for the COVID-19-inflicted Felipe Nasr, emerged as the early leader when the pair of Team Penske Acura ARX-05s and Mazda DPis pitted for slicks within the first ten laps as the 3.56-mile oval/road course quickly dried out.
While handing over to Pipo Derani at the 40-minute mark, the Brazilian in the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R lost second to Jarvis with 1 hour and 3 minutes to go.
It marked the fourth victory in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for Mazda but the first under the full direction of Multimatic, in the operation’s debut race.
A late charge by Sebastien Bourdais saw the No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac DPi complete the podium in third, ahead of the pole-sitting No. 6 Penske Acura DPi of Dane Cameron in fourth.
Derani completed the top-five after also fading late in the running.
Seven of the eight DPis finished the race, with engine issues forcing the No. 7 Penske Acura out of the race early in the second hour.
Tincknell: “Dream Start” for Increased Multimatic Mazda Role
Mazda scores dominant win in first race under full Multimatic operation by John Dagys
Harry Tincknell believes that Saturday’s 1-2 sweep in the WeatherTech 240 at Daytona has been a “dream start” to Multimatic’s increased role with the Mazda DPi program.
While it marked Mazda’s fourth victory in DPi competition, it was the first under the full operation of Multimatic, led by team principal Charlie Cadieux, who along with Stephen Charsley have worked during the coronavirus pandemic to assemble a multi-national crew following the expiration of Team Joest’s contract earlier this year.
“It was the first race with Multimatic running this program full-time out of Mooresville [N.C.],” Tincknell explained.
“They’ve been running with a skeleton crew for the last two or three months, setting up the workshop, new trucks new, pit stand everything like that. So to come here and get a 1-2 is absolutely massive for them.
“We had the car all weekend, just narrowly missed out on pole but we knew we had good race pace.
“Jonathan did a fantastic job and honestly by the time I got in, all I had to do is bring it home cleanly; he’d done all the work for me. It’s fantastic.
“It was literally a dream start for everyone at Multimatic and Mazda Motorsports.”
The win for Tincknell, his third in IMSA competition, comes on the heels of a multi-year contract extension with the Canadian-based company.
“It’s really special,” he said. “Only last week it was announced that I’m going to stay with Multimatic for the long term so to bring home the first win with JB is absolutely an incredible feeling.
“You have to give massive credit to Team Joest as well and the way that the program came along, especially last year with three wins in a row and really fighting for for victories at the end of the season at Petit [Le Mans] and the first round this year at the Rolex [24].
“The second [place] for the 77 there really proved that all the winter testing are reliability and everything that’s gone in with Multimatic and AER has completely transformed the program from where we first started.
“Certainly of course if there’s a change then there’s going to be questions raised and people were going to be looking a little bit closer, especially at the start.
“The 1-2 [finish] just vindicates all the hard work that people like Stephen Charsley have been beavering away back at Mooresville as best they can with the restrictions that have been going on in the last couple of months.”
Bomarito: “Pretty Close” to Starting Race on Slicks
While having opted to start the race on wet-weather Michelin tires like the majority of DPi competitors, Bomarito believes the decision could have potentially gone either way.
Both the No. 31 Action Express Racing and No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.Rs ended up making one fewer stop as a result of taking the green flag on slicks, while battling a drying track, but ultimately didn’t have the outright pace to fight the Mazda DPis.
“[The team] was asking me [pre-race] and I was like, ‘You guys are crazy. I’ll make the decision. We’re going to go on rains for sure,'” Bomarito said.
“I know a few cars did start race on slicks. It was pretty close to being able to do that.
“I think it put them in a tough fuel strategy window, so I think rains from a staying-on-the-track drivability standpoint and staying-in-the-right-fuel-window was the right decision ultimately and it was it was sketchy conditions.
“Any time you have a drying changing condition track… Every single corner every lap until it was completely dry was a different racetrack every time you got there.
“It was hard to stay on top of the track and continue to push through because you just had a blind leap of faith a lot of times predicting how much the track’s actually drying.”
Interesting comments by JBomb regarding the decision of whether to start on slicks or rain tires. When all the leaders went diving into the pits within 20 minutes to change tires I thought that was going to give those cadillacs that started on slicks a tremendous advantage as they'd saved fuel and could stay out longer but fortunately Mazda was able to make the time back up.
WOW, what a great restart to the season, start to the full blown Multimatic partnership and such a win for IMSA to be able to put on a great event and have everything go so smoothly. Looked like rain might mess up the start of the race but after a short delay it really turned into a good race with competitive cars, all kinds of strategy coming into play, Corvette winning it's 100th race and all of while having ZERO cautions. I thought for sure we'd see more contact as drivers hadn't been in cars for so long and they might get overly aggressive. Nope, guess not.
It is exciting as a Mazda fan to see these cars truly dialed in, being reliable, and WINNING. I know Acura was already complaining about Mazda having too much power but I don't actually think that's what gave them the advantage. The drivers and announcers all commented on how Mazda didn't actually have the highest top speed in the straight, it was what Bomarito talked about before the reace, Multimatic spent a LOT of time with the cars and drivers trying to figure out how to better put the power down during transitions. All last season that's where Mazda struggled as the Cadillacs and even Acuras would walk away from Mazdas exiting turns and on straights. This year's car seems to have far better balance as far as being able to go into the braking zones late, maintaining momentum, and not losing as much power coming out of the turns and being able to keep pace on the exits.
Man I'm stoked for the rest of the season.
BOP: I'm sure there will be talk of it but I'd like to see how the cars do at Sebring which is a wildly different track before IMSA starts making too many changes.
Only 2 more weeks to go until the next race!
For those of you who missed the race or just want to relive the action:
SNTP, bummer you missed it, it was a fun race.
The Mazdas looked really strong, commentators made mention of it a few times and Bomarito drove like a madman. The only real worry was whether their decision to start on rain tires would bite them in the *** later as they had to take an extra pit and that allowed the cadillacs to cycle up front.
I noticed in the instagram video the cars now have a heat shield behind the exhaust to prevent the body work from burning off like it did on the 77 at the 24.
nice catch.
yeah, that was a bit of a problem last season.
side note: IMSA, ya buncha slackers! hurry up and update the season standings, I know the 77 is now in the lead for the driver and manufacturer championship but don't nobody actually understand how those points work so I need you to update it so I can update my 1st post.
Ferrari Remains “Very Focused” on Prototype Evaluations
Ferrari’s GT racing boss wants clear position on prototype commitment by end of year…
Ferrari Prototypes racing next to Mazda
YES Please!
Ferrari remains “very focused” on pursuing a program at the top level of prototype racing and aims to have a board-level proposal in place by the end of the year should it decide to commit.
The head of Ferrari’s GT racing department, Antonello Coletta, has told Sportscar365 that the manufacturer is still looking with interest at the possibility of racing in the top class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and other major endurance races.
Ferrari, which currently has factory GTE involvement in the FIA World Endurance Championship, has been attracted to the LMDh global platform announced in January.
obviously we've all been following Mazda's progress / success this season but what's really interesting is how well the JDC Cadillac has done compared to the usual big names of Wayne Taylor or Whelen Engineering.
Fortunately Racer picked up on it and here's some of the inside scoop.
Post-24 development key to strong start in DPi for JDC-Miller
As the newest team in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship DPi category, Minnesota’s JDC-Miller Motorsports team has faced the daunting task of taking on big factory programs and factory-affiliated rivals in the manufacturer-driven class.
Pitted against Acura, Mazda, and championship-winning Cadillac stablemates at Wayne Taylor Racing and Action Express Racing, the team owned by John Church and John Miller has risen to impressive heights in the early stages of the 2020 season. A podium to open the year with a third-place finish at the Rolex 24 At Daytona was huge for the No. 5 Mustang sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R, and with full-timers Sebastien Bourdais and Joao Barbosa adding another third-place result last Saturday night at Daytona behind a Mazda 1-2, the JDC-Miller outfit is making itself hard to ignore.
“It’s all to the credit of the team, obviously,” Bourdais said. “John Church put on the best effort that he could. And thanks to Ken at Mustang Sampling and Christian Fittipaldi to put all the pieces together with John Miller and putting Loic Duval (in) for the long races, and myself. It’s just been overachieving so far, sitting second in the championship.
“We had a goal as a team to kind of hopefully score a podium this season and we got two podiums in two races. Definitely going quite well. I think we made some progress.”
In addition to the execution by the team with pit stops and engineering changes to keep the No. 5 car in the hunt, Bourdais credits a visit to a seven-post shaker rig after the Rolex 24, where significant handling improvements were found for the V8-powered Cadillac prototype.
“A big difference between (the Rolex) 24 and this time is we really managed to get the car in a zone where I felt like I could drive,” he said. “I was really on the back foot at the 24, which probably wasn’t such a big, bad deal because it didn’t really matter so much when you look at the race in the end.
“We got the car on the shaker rig and made some damper improvements, and I think we found some mechanical grip thanks to it, which put the car in a window where (it) actually responds now. And that was the key difference. Obviously, all that work had been done towards Sebring.”
with Sebring coming up this week it'll be interesting to see how Mazda and JDC can do and if they can keep up this level of success.
So far, no word on any BoP changes (**knocks on wood**) but Sebring is a brutal track with those bumps so there's no way to know how this race is going to go. I'm excited for this as I tent to root for the 'little guy' (guess that explains why I love Mazdas so much) so I'd love to see this trend continue.
Good for JDC on finding the success they have and hope they can keep it up.
updated 2020 Standings!
Not since the glory days of Grand Am racing have I seen Mazda so high in the rankings. Obviously it's still early in the season but this is a great start.
Weathertech Championship Standings: (updated after each race)
I knew the others would bitch after Mazda went 1-2. It always happens and Mazda usually loses any advantage after it wins. The big makers just have too much influence over IMSA, always have.
07-04-2020, 06:47 PM
