Monday 6th January 2014

Mazda unveils new LMP car

Racer for new Tudor US series uses Skyactiv diesel tech with stunning results

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New year means a new motorsport season. And a new motorsport season means new racing cars, all very exciting. We've already seen the Honda Civic BTCC wagon and the Ford Daytona; here's Mazda rival for the latter which, erm, doesn't yet have a name.

A diesel with 200hp per litre? We like

The press release describes them simply as 'factory-backed Skyactiv Technology-powered prototypes', the tweets as an 'LMP2 gamechanger'. It will compete with in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship this year, which is shaping up to be a very interesting series.

Mazda's entrants will be the only diesel powered cars in the series. The 2.2-litre Skyactiv-D Clean Diesel engine (another catchy title) actually uses 51 per cent of the parts used in the roadgoing diesel Mazdas, including the cylinder head and valvetrain components. The justification goes that 'it is the most honest way to demonstrate the performance, quality, durability and reliability of Mazda powerplants'.

Of course though, the 49 per cent that are changed yield some fairly significant gains. A Garrett Motorsports turbo, SpeedSource intake and exhaust manifolds plus Mahle pistons contribute to 457hp and 580lb ft in total. That's more than 208hp per litre from a diesel as well.

A carbon monocoque keeps weight down to 900kg without fuel or a driver, with Mazda claiming a 186mph top speed in 'Daytona aero trim'. Despite quoting a tank capacity (73 litres) and a fuel type (Dynamic Fuels Renewable Diesel), there isn't an official MPG from Mazda yet.

The Daytona races takes place on 25/26 January, with the car already having completed some pre-season "Roar Before the 24" (yes, really) testing. Can it succeed?

[Source: WCF, pic from Mazda USA Twitter]

[anonymous-user]

Hurray! Yet another highly exciting worthy race car to add to the ever growing collection of such cars!

[Blackpuddin]

I think the Skyactiv stuff from Mazda is pretty exciting tbh, the tech makes diesels more like petrols and petrols more like diesels.

[knighty]

I suspect serious BS in the power figure they are claiming.......in the recent test session at Daytona this weekend just gone, consider there were 8 sessions spread over 3 days, when they started running hard in the final sessions they were a full 10 seconds off the pace of the front running DP and LMP2 cars who have a touch over 500bhp, see the link below.......based on my experience, I suspect they have a lot less than 400bhp, more like 350bhp......I really dont think they stand a chance of mixing it with the other LMP2 and DP cars, I suspect this is going to be a PR travesty, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.....really they should have used a V6 base engine with about 3 litres capacity

http://www.dailysportscar.com/Uploads/USCC/2014/DA...

.

[mrmr96]

"208hp per litre from a diesel" bloody hell!!

[Ahonen]

PW said:

Another high quality PH article.

Don't mention that it is 2 full season entries by the factory-backed Speedsource team following on from their campaign in the Grand Am GX class last year in a Mazda6 powered by the same diesel engine.

Don't mention it is a Lola coupe, a continuation of the Le Mans programme announced in 2012 and the potential for it to lead to an entry for the 24hrs in the future.

Don't mention it will be driven by Sylvain Tremblay, Tom Long, Joel Miller and Tristan Nunez.

Because taking a few minutes to look up those basic, pertinant pieces of information is not as important as including tenuous links to other PH stories and thinking up pointless comments to put in parentheses.

It is not as if PH has a well-informed audience of enthusiasts that would appreciate or be interested in having facts in news stories, is it?

Don't be daft - that would involve somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes of research and a couple of minutes of typing. It's far better to make a sarcastic comment about the name of the engine.

[goron59]

PW said:

Another high quality PH article.

Don't mention that it is 2 full season entries by the factory-backed Speedsource team following on from their campaign in the Grand Am GX class last year in a Mazda6 powered by the same diesel engine.

Don't mention it is a Lola coupe, a continuation of the Le Mans programme announced in 2012 and the potential for it to lead to an entry for the 24hrs in the future.

Don't mention it will be driven by Sylvain Tremblay, Tom Long, Joel Miller and Tristan Nunez.

Because taking a few minutes to look up those basic, pertinant pieces of information is not as important as including tenuous links to other PH stories and thinking up pointless comments to put in parentheses.

It is not as if PH has a well-informed audience of enthusiasts that would appreciate or be interested in having facts in news stories, is it?

Absolutely, but we don't expect journalism from PH do we?

[possibletowel]

is that the highest specific output of any diesel engine? Or are audi's prototypes bigger?

[thatdude]

Interesting that they decide to keep certain parts from the road car engines - although they must still require modification to cope with constant high running speeds and temps?

[chevronb37]

I was discussing this with a colleague this afternoon. We agreed that the level of journalism on this site is really pretty poor. Just rehashed press releases or some basic commentary on the worthiness of an old video on YouTube.

As part of Haymarket, why not just get Autosport to write all the motor racing features? Or just run them past Henry Hope-Frost for subbing. It looks especially bad because there's a knowledgable readership who won't miss an opportunity to correct any factual errors in the copy via the forums.

[Blackpuddin]

Wouldn't that just be autosport.com though?
Isn't PH meant to be about entertainment?

[BBS-LM]

Ahonen said:

PW said:

Another high quality PH article.

Don't mention that it is 2 full season entries by the factory-backed Speedsource team following on from their campaign in the Grand Am GX class last year in a Mazda6 powered by the same diesel engine.

Don't mention it is a Lola coupe, a continuation of the Le Mans programme announced in 2012 and the potential for it to lead to an entry for the 24hrs in the future.

Don't mention it will be driven by Sylvain Tremblay, Tom Long, Joel Miller and Tristan Nunez.

Because taking a few minutes to look up those basic, pertinant pieces of information is not as important as including tenuous links to other PH stories and thinking up pointless comments to put in parentheses.

It is not as if PH has a well-informed audience of enthusiasts that would appreciate or be interested in having facts in news stories, is it?

Don't be daft - that would involve somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes of research and a couple of minutes of typing. It's far better to make a sarcastic comment about the name of the engine.

I was just going to ask, what the hell is Skyactiv diesel

Not to sure a 5000rpm diesel engine is high revving?

[chevronb37]

It could be whatever they want. My point is that Autosport is an authoritative source of information on motor racing news. PH isn't. Just getting Henry Hope-Frost (a name I pick because he is a sub editor and encylopedia of knowledge) to check articles for factual correctness might save the embarrassment of forum members correcting the glaring factual errors which abound whenever PH publishes anything about racing.

Articles can be both entertaining and factually correct.

As an aside, Dan Prosser's column today is excellent so praise where it is due. He's routinely top notch though.

[knighty]

PW said:

From Racer.com

Mazda rebounded from an unforgiving Friday where both cars spent the majority of the day in the garage being repaired or having components replaced. The team didn't turn a ton of laps with its pair of P2 diesels on Saturday, but did complete the goals they set out for themselves. Most of their activity took place during the night session where the Nos. 07 and 70 each turned 27 laps, with team owner/driver Sylvain Tremblay posting a fast lap of 1:48.88, well shy of the 1:39.9 recorded by David Brabham in the Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b P2 car. “We're getting some wind back in our sails,” Tremblay told RACER. “Yesterday we had a shaky day. We're working on engine reliability and some new driveline components, so we focused today on getting our cars and drivers dialed in during the night session. The cars are very conservative on the engine tune, and that's on purpose; we're very good on the infield sector times and way down on the straights, but we knew that would be the case going in. We're working on the chassis, and you can't do that if you're pushing the engine too hard this early in the program.

For sure there is some sort of smoke and mirrors game going on........in this months racecar engineering magazine the Mazda LMP2 diesel article shows some images of the engine installation, and I must say it looks very professional on the exterior, they have a compound twin-turbo system that will give a good balance of transient response and high boost pressures, as the 4-pot will be very laggy......but I suspect the guts / internals of the motor are not designed to acceptable durability standards.......machined from solid steel pistons have been standard fitment for Audi and previously Peugeot LMP1 teams for the past 5 years......do they have steel pistons???.....I doubt it

[oldtimer2]

The new US sportscar racing season looks to be very promising, with several classes, plenty of competition and innovation too. Here`s hoping the merger of the competing authorities works out.

[vetteheadracer]

I was at the Roar Before The 24 and took a few pics of the Mazdas, they looks great, but seemed to have a lot of reliability issues.



I also shot a short video of it running in the pits

http://youtu.be/LkBhpZMDo-8

A couple more pics.

Edited by vetteheadracer on Monday 6th January 15:01

[Mavican]

BBS-LM said:

I was just going to ask, what the hell is Skyactiv diesel

Not to sure a 5000rpm diesel engine is high revving?

Was going to ask a similar question, is it a new engine or is it based on the ford/psa engine? Hard to tell after ford sold their stake in Mazda or whether they went their own way completely beforehand.

[anonymous-user]

BBS-LM said:

Not to sure a 5000rpm diesel engine is high revving?

If we assume that 580lbft is peak torque but also pretty close to the torque made at peak power, then to make 457bhp peak power, they will be making that at around 4200rpm. Pretty much the same a most modern HiPo road diesels (as you would expect, because they are burn rate limited)

[knighty]

PW said:

knighty said:

do they have steel pistons???.....I doubt it

Don't forget P2 regulations require a "production based" engine and are subject to other cost-capping measures.

my point exactly, they are therefore most probably using standard OEM cast alloy pistons, but at over double the power rating - gulp.....they are doomed to fail on that basis......the cylinder pressures and resultant piston temperatures will be stratospheric, and I will also be surprised if they have increased the flow of the piston cooling jets in order to help keep the piston temperature under control.....as they say, the devil is in the detail.

[chevronb37]

PW said:

knighty said:

do they have steel pistons???.....I doubt it

Don't forget P2 regulations require a "production based" engine and are subject to other cost-capping measures.

Blackpuddin said:

Isn't PH meant to be about entertainment?

Well then have something "entertaining".

A news story isn't entertainment.

Who is this article aimed at?

The casual PH viewer without much knowledge of prototype racing? What do they learn? Not much beyond a few trivial bits of information with no real context of how this fits into the series or motorsport in general.

The niche motorsport enthusiast? What do they learn? Nothing that wasn't reported widely by specialist sites/publications in November last year.

Quite. If I want to be entertained I'll watch videos of cats on YouTube. I read news articles about racing because I want to be informed. This shouldn't mean appealling to the lowest common denominator.

[anonymous-user]

knighty said:

PW said:

knighty said:

do they have steel pistons???.....I doubt it

Don't forget P2 regulations require a "production based" engine and are subject to other cost-capping measures.

my point exactly, they are therefore most probably using standard OEM cast alloy pistons

i think it's safe to say they are not using the OE pistons!