Well I luckily got the opportunity to attend an ALMS race a few months ago through a friend and I must say it was a fun experience. The downside though was with the economic downturn, the financial strings once holding up teams of the past have now been cut, seeing the disappearance of past '08 teams such as Porsche and Audi, heavy P2 and P1 class competitors, respectively. Acura, however, was still on the playing field in both P1 (the only ones in P1) and P2 classes with amazing cars with hydraulic stabilizers and carbon fiber plate-backed rotors. I must admit the cars were extremely badass, but with all the media coverage and the huge Honda backed budget that the Acura cars got, I turned my attention to another P2 competitor and the underdog, Mazda. Now I'm not one to shoot down technology, but it's nice to see a car on a slightly tighter budget, a more grass roots approach to racing.
The thing I first noticed about the Mazdas were their extremely different exhaust note. The Ferrari GT2 F430 and the high reving, big bore, short stroke Acuras had extremely high pitched exhaust notes, more similar to a shreaking five year old at a Toys R Us. The Mazdas however, had a low howl, and then a loud, low tone hiss once they passed and clipped the candy-cane colored apexes. The reason: a turbo. Rather than sticking to a small displacement, rev happy V-8 like most over P2 cars, Mazda dipped their hands into the water of forced induction. Using a motor which was around the lines of 2.0 litres, Mazda maximized the performance of their small inline four with a fairly large turbo. The ALMS rules obviously allow for this, but rules for turbo'd vehicles are applied to cap the performance and to somewhat keep these cars at par with their competitors. For one, boost is only limited to 1.5 atomospheres (~23 psi) and a restrictor must be used which is situated in front of the compressor inlet. You must be thinking wait, what about turbo lag? Anti-lag is permitted and used by the Mazda team to rocket these things off the line and provide torque at almost all areas of the rev band. A wastegate with a large diaphram must be used to correctly control boost at all times and can be seen in the picture above (black coffee mug looking thing right above the carbon fiber piece next to tire on the bottom of the photograph). And the anti-lag woos the spectators with off-throttle flames and "pops" which echoed off the concrete walls and high rise buildings of Long Beach.
Another thing I really appreciated on the Mazda cars were their simplistic use of materials and design. As can be seen above, carbon fiber was only used for body panels in the rear and small diameter steel tubing prevailed as king on numerous suspension components. Rather than a high tech stabilizer system as was seen on the Acura car which looked like a damper, the Mazdas used steel tube and rod ends which attached to a pair of aluminum "rockers" and a bracket which connected the two sides of the stabilizer system together. You may be asking yourself, then why is there only one bar connected to the rear bracket (JDLAB pun)? The streets of Long Beach isn't your typical track with smooth surfaces and banked turns, and Mazda needed to maximized traction by running a softer set-up. By disconnecting one side of the stabilizer bar system, there essentially is no stabilizer on the car, which allows for maximum droop travel and increased tire grip over bumpy surfaces. Steel tube A-arms were also used and aluminum shims were added to suspension pick-up points to adjust camber and caster. So SIMPO!!!
Alright, so I kinda lied, the car did have a carbon fiber intake manifold, but still it's nothing dramatic like a huge dry carbon intake box with 8 individual throttle bodies and gold foil to dissipate heat. Another cool part was the use of 8 injectors. I know I told you it's a four cylinder, but there is a reason for the method to this madness. Four injectors are situated below the four throttle bodies but above the cylinder head while the other four sit above above the throttle bodies on the intake runners right off the intake manifold. The four closer the intake manifold allow for increased fuel atomization at higher RPM speeds which increases torque and throttle response. I'm sure there is also a special firing technique for anti-lag with these eight injectors but I'm sure the healthy sized guy in the picture wouldn't tell me anymore (after he spilled the beans about the motor displacement, boost pressure, restrictor size and so on).In the end, the two Mazda LMP2 cars couldn't hold their own against the Acura, but I was informed by an Acura engineer that they were ~6 to 7mph faster down the straights at Long Beach. Why did Mazda run the inline four-turbo instead of the coveted rotary? Reliability? Power? It was probably more along the lines that the Mazdaspeed division who built these engines have become pretty well acquainted and experienced with turbo'd inline fours with their Mazdaspeed 3 and 6. Marketing wise, it does make more sense since their fastest car runs this similar platform and as we all know the RX-8 needs a little more gut before it can be labeled as Mazda's jugernaut.
Well, again thanks for reading and like all of you, I hope the economy resolves itself soon so we can see more competitors out there on the track.
-Josh
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