Wow! It’s been a quiet couple of weeks for me to recharge and keep conditioning for the 2017 season, but our Mazda Motorsports crew has been putting in really long hours every day to prepare our two brand-new Mazda RT24Ps for the Roar Before the 24 test. The annual Daytona test begins this Friday.
I’m so excited to get back to Daytona. The last time we were there, in December, we got a glimpse of some of the new hardware that the teams and manufacturers are bringing, and this time we’ll get an even bigger preview of what the 2017 season will look like. Nissan has unveiled their DPi program, which puts three manufacturers, including Mazda and Cadillac, on the DPi platform.
There has been a lot of hype with overseas teams announcing their involvement for the Rolex 24, too. It’s going to be a really exciting race because there will be so much that’s new, from our own cars, to other manufacturers, to teams from overseas.
For Mazda Motorsports, we have a lot to focus on with our new platform. We learned so much during our last visit to Daytona. Now we’ll have both cars so we can learn even more, and at a quicker rate. We’ll be focusing on things like aero configurations, ideal chassis setup, understanding what our fuel mileage is, and even how traffic management is going to be with the ever-growing GTD class.
With the new prototype platform, the way we interact with traffic will be different. The GTLM class got a bump in performance for this year and the DPi platform is quicker, so where we are able to out-brake or out-accelerate cars will be things we have to learn from a driver’s standpoint. We’ll be in traffic for 23 hours and 45 minutes during the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, and keeping a consistent pace is important, whether you’re dealing with three cars on one lap or seven cars.
Later this week, Mazda will be announcing the full Rolex 24 driver lineup for its two prototypes. Be sure to check back on Wednesday to find out more details! Next week we’ll do a wrap-up of the Roar, and you can get live updates from the test by following me, Mazda Racing and IMSA Live on Twitter.