Rolex 24 hr Daytona 2013
 

The GX Class saw all 3 Mazda Skyactive entries Fail Early. The #75 & #25 cars suffered a dropped cylinder, the #00 car suffered a rear main seal failure. Neither problem had been experienced on the dyno.

“This is not a pure race engine; it is a production block Skyactiv-D,” Doonan said. “We’re happy to report that the engine is meeting the performance targets for both power and endurance. That means 400-plus horsepower (298kW) for over 50 hours, with an engine that includes a very long list of production Mazda parts.” (the production diesel will have around a 165 hp and 350 lb-ft output). But for now, Mazda is clearly quite proud of its new Grand AM GX-class racer, which according to the automaker utilizes over 250 stock components in the engine.

They mentioned last night that the 6's only had 8 laps of actual track time prior to arriving at Daytona.

#00 - second car out of the race, completing only 33 laps
#25 - out after 45 laps
#70 - apparently the best of the group, out after only 51 laps

Mazda wouldn't release the 6 to the teams til the last minute because of the release to the general public, so the teams didn't get any testing with the engine in the car until January. the SkyINACTIVE diesel had over 400 dyno hours but virtually none in the chassis.

Very Disappointing, the worst news possible. :(

VIDEO OF CAR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=3rIzYWBipNE#!

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/imag...3GoWeb450y.jpg

http://onthelimit.files.wordpress.co...ng?w=590&h=260

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/...Daytona_00.jpg

http://alt-a.bitg.net/nightmobile/ca...600/244632.jpg

....but they look sharp!

Overall Winner: Juan Pablo Montoya from NASCAR brought the mighty #01 for Ganassi racing across the line for his 3rd overall Rolex24 victory, giving his team mate Scott Pruett a record tying 5th overall victory, Rojas a third and Rolex rookie Charlie Kimball his first victory in the event. The team covered 2,524.04 miles over 709 laps, finishing 21.52 seconds ahead of the Wayne Taylor Corvette in second and nearly a minute ahead of the defending champions in the Michael Shank Ford Riley.
http://tributeracing.files.wordpress...nset.jpg?w=731

Found a Video riding along Mazda 6 looking out front window. Mazda 6 Skyactive Diesel was in the slowest class. He doesn't pass anybody, but gets passed from other classes.
Also some good pics there.
Scroll down for video:

Mazda6 GX Grand-Am racer goes where no diesel sedan has gone before

It's my opinion that they spent too much time on marketing, and not enough time preparing----due to lack of actual track time.
I understand that they wanted to show the durability of the stock engine in a 24 hour endurance race as the engine used had 250 stock components, but they made a big mistake. If it would have worked they would have been geniuses but it didn't.
This being a very new field for Mazda (diesel racing), they should have had more real time track testing.
This is what happens with a new engine. I'm sure they learned from this and the experience will lead to improvements. Hopefully, the next race will be better (nothing can be worse than what happened @ 24 hrs Daytona, Rolex.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/cm/roada...SC_0023-md.jpg
http://www.roadandtrack.com/cm/roada...SC_0037-md.jpg

They knew the risks going into this. I am also sure they will improve on the cars and will look quite good by the end of the Rolex Series 2013.

Your link to selling fake Rolex watches is not appreciated and is frowned upon, especially for your first post. :mad::mad: :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Mazda finally worked out the bugs and is doing much better now.