Mazda Has Broken A Daytona Lap Record That's Stood For 26 Years

The Mazda RT24-P unofficially set a new Daytona road course lap record at the Roar Before the 24 test

07 Jan 2019

Oliver Jarvis drove the No. 77 Mazda RT24-P under the overall track record in today’s Roar Before the 24 Qualifying session at @DISupdates, setting a time of 1:33.398. Harry Tincknell in the No. 55 Castrol Mazda RT24-P was second with a time of 1:33.423. #Roar24 pic.twitter.com/0vvj9RMxrc
— Mazda Motorsports (@MazdaRacing) January 6, 2019

The Toyota-powered AAR Eagle Mk III is one of those racing cars that was too fast for its own good. Its incredible success saw it win 21 of the 27 races it competed in, prompting rival teams to drop out at the end of the 1992 season.

A year later, IMSA’s monstrously fast GTP era was dead, and just to give you an idea of how fast those cars were, it’s taken until 2019 for the Mk III’s Daytona road course lap record to be broken.

Well, sort of. Mazda’s RT24-P IMSA car set a time of 1:33.398sec with Oliver Jarvis at the wheel on Sunday, comfortably beating the Mk III’s 1:33.875 effort. But as it was a test session - the Daytona 24-previewing ‘Roar Before the 24’ event - it’s an unofficial record.

Official Lap Record--1993, AAR Eagle Mk III 1m33.875s. Unofficial Lap Record: 2019, Mazda RT24-P 1m33.398s. #Roar24 @RACERmag @IMSA pic.twitter.com/LUoCadNjq0
— Marshall Pruett (@marshallpruett) January 6, 2019

Jarvis’ teammate Harry Tincknell was just behind, meanwhile, posting the second fastest time of the session with a 1:33.423. It was a dominant session for Mazda Team Joest, with the closest competitor to Jarvis and Tincknell -Acura’s Ricky Taylor - trailing the pair by over eight-tenths of a second.

Will Mazda be able to officially break the record? With the 24 Hours of Daytona taking place 26-27 January, we don’t long to wait before finding out.

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Wow

Forgive my ignorance about this car, please, but… Is this a rotary? The RT moniker made me think so.

Nope , it’s a 2.0 turbo i4 .

RT24 means Road To 24, Mazda’s motorsport ladder program for drivers.
There’s also Road to Indy.

Thanks guys!

Holy cow! 2.0 inline 4!?

only 600hp :’D

When I looked at the thumbnail:

“Why did they use mercedes project 1 though?”

2.0T and they yet failed to release any 2.0T (or a 2.5T since they have a good working engine anyway) on the european market in a compact hatchback (or sedan, whatever). MPS/Mazdaspeed is gone, Rotary obviously is gone and not easy to bring back, but the MPS series is quite easy to bring back.