Thought this was an interesting interview, maybe some of you would enjoy. I've been fascinated with Austrailian 80's endurance racing, and think it was a cool period. I love watching some of the videos of the races. Interesting to see the little RX-7 compete against the big V8 Commodores. I also found it interesting how Moffat said the RX-7s greatest strength was it's reliability

 

Johnny Herbert concurs:

Reliability was how the rotary made its name in motorsport, particularly endurance racing.

 

Thanks for posting, some of the driving strategies he discussed seemed to coincide with how the Austrailian cars seem to have been driven. Interesting comments about how the smoothness of the rotary reduces driver fatigue, probably even more prevalent in a stripped out race car.

Shame they didn't start rallying our cars until 84', wonder if they could have done better had there been more (any) factory support. Reliability seems like it would have helped there.

 

RX-7s have been rallied way before '84.

http://tech-racingcars.wikidot.com/mazda-savanna-rx7

I'm pretty sure RX-3s were rallied, too.

 

That spec sheet lists the 12A at 11.0:1 compression

 

Also noticed that haha

 

They were being rallied in the states in 80,81,82 because I saw them in the 100 Acre Wood rally
back then when I worked the corners and took pictures for my college car club.

I remember the 4WD rx7 of millens, it was a beast. Very cool car.

 

Yea, guess I was only thinking of Group B, where the car wasn't really that competitive. People usually say due to being N/A and RWD the car wasn't competitive against the 4WD turbo cars, but I'd expect N/A to be a good deal more reliable than most of the small displacement / high power turbo cars. Maybe that didn't matter. Opel Ascona 400 was still competitive and was N/A and RWD, so I dunno.

 

The 12A RX-7s had bridge ported engines. 9.4:1 according to the homologation. My engine has a duplicate of those ports, and they look identical to Racing Beat templates.

They might have done better in international B if they had real factory backing. They... didn't. MRTE wasn't as much of a factory effort as it was a privateer-led factory-supported effort.

 

That also seems to be the common consensus, only other N/A RWD car I can think of in Group B was the Nissan 240RS. It seemed to do okay.

 

The Opel Manta 400 was a force to be reckoned with in UK rallying, even in the 4wd era. Naturally aspirated 2.4l rear driver.

Generally speaking, the 2wds tended to do better on tarmac rallies and on very long rallies - less stuff to break. The Toyota Celica was practically unbeatable in Africa. Stone simple car, basically a Toyota Escort. Which, so was the Mazda, except the Mazda had less development time and a lot less money entering them in rallies and supporting them.

 

Indeed rallies were very long back then. Their famous 3rd place WRC result in Greece was due to attrition, even then the 4WD cars were way ahead and the RX-7 finished well over 2 hours behind.

The most Mazda spent on racing was probably for Le Mans and even then it was a fraction of what Toyota or Nissan spent. They've always been the plucky underdog.

 

In the 80s, I'm thinking Mazda was all about GTU. 10 years in a row...

 

Part of what I find appealing about the rotary is the heritage it has in endurance racing. The Mazda rotaries were never the fastest cars, but they handled well, were reliable and had decent power and I think that's what they owe their success to. The fact that the Cosmo came in 4th at the 68' 84 Hours of Nurburgring is very telling of this.
What I find impressive is that even after the release of the FC, Mazda was still winning GTU with the FB.
My understanding is that the Manta 400 is basically the same car as the Ascona 400. The Manta is cool, but I'd have a hard time passing up on a nice Ascona B or Kadett C.