no more rotary
 

this pisses me off. They were using the 3 rotor in the alms. now there using a new chassis & a new 2.0 liter motor

http://www.roadandtrack.com/article....rticle_id=4603

sucks there ditching the rotor

The Lola B07 is so much better a chassis than the C65, which is over 5 years old I believe.

And if you want to see Mazda on the podium, let them use a piston motor. Ever since the 787B won at Le Mans in 1991, the ACO regs have never been rotary friendly which has severely hurt its competitiveness.

Boo!

They want to keep making rotarys, but they won't campaign one in a high profile series? Its crazy, its the classic what wins on sunday sells on monday, and they aren't doing it. This would be great R&D for the renesis and they're deciding against it. Why?

I can understand that they'd have to go against the restrictions placed on the rotary, but I think Mazda could engineer around it, or get the rules changed after a year or two.

Maybe I just like the rotary too much. But if Mazda doesn't campaign one, who will?

I think maybe the RX-8 has become slightly a eye-sore for Mazda. Espically with the whole engine recall deal. When I went to the Detroit auto show, they didnt even have the rotary engine model display! I was sad too, but now they are shifting to the new MZR Direct injection stuff. So it is race on sunday sell on monday, sell the mainstream engines I guess. The Rx-8 is very very minor on the production scales compared to the Mazda 3, Mazda 6 and CX7. But who knows, maybe this will be a one year deal.

^Thats a good point, especially from the "paying the bills" perspective.

But I still think that Mazda has this niche market, and they aren't doing much to support it. They trow us bones every once in a while, or just tease us along. I think if they stepped up the game on the rotary, but still provided the mass market cars to pay the bills they could get a large chunk of the sports car market.

At least they're doing an awesome job with Mazdaspeed, what other company has their in house tuner building almost completely different cars with great performace. Maybe AMG and Mercedes.

I was mad as hell when I found out about this, but over at rx-8 club some of the members of the team gave a good inside.

it is very simple the BK motorsport program was a MNAO proyect and they simply arent involve in rotary engine development, mazda japan is, they needed to develop a rotary that work inside the rules of the ACO, this would take time, money and engeniring that MNAO does't have, for some reason mazda japan did not get involve in this proyect.

We can still see 4c ars with 3 rotor engine's at the Daytona 24

I'm sure that Mazda does not consider the RX-8 an eyesore. They have sold over 100,000 of them...not too shabby. Unforunately in this circumstance the ALMS rules are too strict on rotaries, which is why they chose a piston engine. If you're going to be mad, be mad at the ALMS.

Plus, Mazda is really hot on their direct injection engines right now. They should be too, they can do some very impressive things with them and want to push the technology.

The good news for rotary-heads is that there are rumors of applying some of the direct injection technologies to the rotary in the future, which could bring some much needed life.

^All very true.

Last I heard Mazda had sold more Rx-8s than Hummer had sold H-2's, so thats a good thing.

160,577 till november

there are no specifics rules for rotary's in the ACO, you have to built it and get it aprove, so spend your money and maybe they tell you, "nope we dont like that setup try againg please" or "yes that car is ok but take this and that off"

That is 10 times more than Rx-7's sold. Crazy.

ALMS rules teh suck

ALMS rules = ACO rules = Le Mans rules

They are all the same, its not just ALMS

Ya every single one of them are ...( I'm not winning so im going to take my ball and go home Predudice Bigots). Tell me im wrong

The new engine isn't even a Mazda engine. They claim it's a new engine from the ground up but that's only partially correct. AER is building the engine for them. They have a proven track record with LeMans engines. Mazda isn't using their standard four cylinder though. AER's V8 is a more modern engine. It's head was designed specifically with direct injection in mind although they never ran the engine with it. The new Mazda engine is basically the AER V8 engine cut in half. It's all the same components of the V8 engine including the head just slapped into a new 4 cylinder block. This means that although Mazda is claiming it's a new DISI engine like their 4 cylinder engines now, it's really just an AER direct injected engine design. It's not a Mazda engine.

What the ACO needs to do is instead of putting restrictions on engines, they need to put a restriction on power. That's always been the purpose of the restrictors. Put a 500 hp cap on LMP2 and a 750 hp cap on LMP1. Then put weight minimums on them (which they already have). As long as you stay within these guidelines, run whatever you want to. That would be more fair. The key then would be in designing a race engine that makes the most average power within the horsepower cap range and who can best mate this with their gearing.

:( why do they hate that which is better than they are...

Man, why is it always like this? Oh, so we happened to kick your ass, and leave you 20 miles behind, so now we get our legs broken, just so it is "Fair?" WTF, man?

Mazda kicked ass, so shouldn't people step up, rather than tripping them? Maybe if everyone wasn't such a little B**CH, other companies would co-op with mazda and we could see something else with a rotary, otherr than an RX on the roads. Shure, "exclusive club" and shit, but look how much honda benifitted from the whole 90's engine swap craze thing...

Unfortunately the way that ALMS, LMS and FIA GT are run, they dont want to see one single team dominate the rest. They want competition.

The engine used in the ALMS car was a peripheral ported motor, it wasn't related to the RX-8 engine at all. If you want to see a Mazda rotary-powered car race, look for the SpeedSource RX-8.

www.speedsourceinc.com

-s-