The icing on Mazda’s 90th birthday cake must be the SpeedSource Mazda RX-8‘s victory a few hours ago at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona enduro. Drivers Jonathan Bomarito, Nick Ham, David Haskell, and Sylvain Tremblay repeated their 2008 win amidst a field of Porsche GT3s and Camaros.
Of course, Mazda has some experience at this venue, having conquered all at the 1979 Daytona 24 Hours during the inaugural run of the IMSA SA22C Mazda RX-7. See JNC #3 for the full story. Who says rotaries aren’t reliable?
[RX-8 image courtesy of The Epoch Times.]
I saw an RX8 being trucked into my Mazda dealer the other day. The manager told me they get 2-3 a week come in on the back of a truck due to some mechanical fail! Why do they only work well for race teams?
I was with Team Seattle @ the Daytona 24 just yesterday as part of the spotter team. Unbelievable experience! We ran our RX-8 alongside Dempsey Racing’s 8, finishing 25th overall with the Dempsey car running 14th. As a Datsun man, I don’t know too much about the Mazdas. But after this race, I respect and support these screaming little Banshees 100% (These things really do break your eardrums!). lol…
BTW: Through our Mazda, we raised $402,000 for Seattle Children’s hospital!Great race!
It was an interesting race, started under yellow because of rain and the 911s had better traction in the wet, but once it dried up the Mazdas pounced. I loved seeing the bursts of flame out of the tail pipes during the downshifts.
Yup, Rotaries are reliable, as long as you don’t have a turbo blowing on them. I was totally ecstatic seeing this RX-8 take out those GT3’s. The team is probably still hung over. lol
rotaries
say no more.
I will though, had my SA22C for 20 years,
never stranded me on the side of the road once,
had the engine rebuilt in 95 still working in the car today
(could use a freshen up though)
Most reliable car I’ve owned and most fun,
and aways looks cool.
Reliability goes down on any motor you stick a hairdrier on to BTW.
Will K – congrats on raising so much money for a good cause! =D