Mazda Team Joest looks toward Sebring

Monday, 12 March 2018



With a new team running the program, a radically changed Mazda RT-24P and a new driver lineup, hopes for Mazda Team Joest were high for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the first round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Things unfortunately didn't go as planned, but the team has regrouped, continued testing and expects to be ready for the 12 Hours of Sebring on March 17.
"The issues we had at Daytona were unexpected," says John Doonan, Director, Mazda Motorsports. "We tested there for nine days starting in late October, early November, including all the IMSA-sanctioned tests, and we tested at Sebring for three days. In total we had 14 test days between Europe and the States, so the issues we saw at Daytona were very frustrating because they were all new things that we had not seen during testing, which is pretty hard to believe from that standpoint because of how much time we put in.