American Le Mans Series

[Turbo II]

Anyone else keep up with this, I've tried the last couple of years to do so. Watching the 12 Hours of Sebring on Speed right now. Unfortunately BK Motorsports LMP2 Lola/Mazda had a major accident Thursday and looks like it didn't make the grid. Anyway, here's a couple of pics of the car.

[blwnrtr93]

I plan to go to the Atlanta race October 1-4 this year. I'll probably only make it out on Saturday, but I may be able to talk the wife into Friday as well.

[WE3RX7]

I catch them on SPEED every now and then - I enjoy watching them, but feel lost as I don't know all the big players!

What powers the mazda car? I know its not rotary... maybe someday we'll get the rules adjusted in favor of Rotary for Lemans...

[Turbo II]

You can run a rotary, they did their first year. This year they're running a 4 in-line turbocharged engine.

MAZDASPEED engineers in the U.S. and Japan, in conjunction with U.K. based Advanced Engine Research Ltd (AER), will debut an all-new MZR-R prototype engine at the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring. The new engine, a clean sheet design, is a turbocharged 2.0 liter in-line four cylinder. The performance goals for the engine are 500hp and 400 lb-ft, with the durability to succeed in such grueling races as the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans. The engineering team is working to incorporate the production-based Mazda Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) system into the race motor. The technical collaboration between Mazda and AER has been non-stop in preparation for the season-opener at Sebring.

Motorsports Development Manager Steve Sanders stated, “Given the rules package, we needed to make a radical change to be able to match the competition. The current conditions and rules simply do not allow our rotary engine to have any competitive advantage, hence the move to piston power this season.”

Sanders continued, “The Mazda and AER engineers are working closely with Honeywell Turbo Technologies on the development of a new Garrett motorsports turbocharger design for this engine program. The overall LMP2 program is driven by Mazda engineering, as we use motorsports to help develop future advanced technologies with the potential to transfer over to our production vehicles.”

Mazda remains firmly committed to the rotary engine, in the street-going RX-8 four-door sportscar and racing classes like Grand Am GT and the one-make professional Star Mazda formula car series.

While the new engine will be exclusive to B-K Motorsports in 2007, the long-term goal is to add teams in both the American Le Mans Series as well as the Le Mans Endurance Series in Europe in 2008.

[Proxy One]

Ive been going to ALMS events since the turn of the century hehe. I got into it when Downing Atlanta was running the Kudzu 4 Rotors. Then they went to a WR 4 Rotor for a year then dropped out due to regulations changing for chassis designs, its hard to buy a new car every 2 or so years without factory backing.

Spencer Racing has raced serveral different rotary cars in the past years also and still have many cars at there disposal. They purchased Miracle Motorsports cars and im just waiting to see what they do with them.

As far as B-K goes I liked the look of the Sports Book Courage C65 better (BTW that chassis is under the Furai now) than the Lola but the new car is faster, wish they would have just put a turbo on the 20B and it could have been competitive.