Mazda pulls out of IMSA
Mazda has pulled the plug on its participation in the IMSA Sportscar Championship. The US arm of the Japanese manufacturer will end its Daytona Prototype international campaign at the end of this season and will not be entering the LMDH ranks when the new formula comes on stream in 2023.
The decision brings to an end a continuous involvement by Mazda in prototype sportscar racing in North America stretching back to 2005. It has opted instead to focus on grassroots racing, including the successful MX-5 one-make series.
A curt statement from Mazda Motorsports read: “After five years of participating in IMSA’S DPI series, Mazda is opting to end its programme at the close of the 2021 season. This was determined after an internal assessment of the current DPI series and the future LMDH series, and concludes Mazda’s participation in prototype racing.”
Mazda North American Operations boss Masahiro Moro described last year’s victory at the Sebring 12 Hours and the podiums finishes at the Daytona 24 Hours in 2020 and 2021 as “significant accomplishments in the history of Mazda Motorsports”.
Significant maybe, but also belated. It took the Mazda RT24-P DPI two and a half seasons to start winning.
The marque has mounted a disjointed campaign through the
DPI era. It started out with the Speedsource team in 2017, switched to Joest Racing for 2018, brought in the Multimatic organisation that had developed the RT24-P to bolster the German team’s efforts in 2019, and then got rid of Joest altogether early last year. For the 2021 season, it has slimmed the programme down from two cars to one.
The tale of underachievement stretches all the way back to Mazda’s re-entry into the prototype ranks in North America in 2005 via a low-key LMP2 campaign with B-K Motorsport and a rotary engine. It did claim the ALMS title as an engine supplier with Dyson Racing in 2011, but its initial efforts with Mazda-badged machinery – actually old Lola B12/80s – are best described as laughable. It fielded the cars with a road-based turbodiesel unit in 2014-15 before switching to the Aer-developed four-cylinder turbo engine that subsequently went into the back of the RT24-P.
The withdrawal comes at a time when the Mazda programme is on what driver Harry Tincknell has called an “upward trajectory”. The first race victories for the RT24-P in 2019 were followed by a maiden win in one of the big enduros at Sebring last November. The solo Mazda, which Tincknell shared with full-season team-mate Oliver Jarvis and Jonathan Bomarito, looked odds-on for victory with an hour to go at Daytona last month until an issue with the rear wing.
The question is whether Mazda can bury the disappointments of the past and go out on a high. “We’ve shown at Sebring and Daytona that the reliability is now in the car,” said Tincknell. “Given a fair Balance of Performance, we’ve got to think we have a fair chance of winning the championship.”