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Mazda IMSA squad says it has fixed issues that cost it in Daytona 24H

The Mazda Team Joest IMSA SportsCar Championship squad says it has solved the issues that cost it the chance of winning the Daytona 24 Hours.

The #77 Mazda RT24-P Daytona Prototype international of Oliver Jarvis, Tristan Nunez, Timo Bernhard and Rene Rast started January's IMSA season opener from pole and was running second second when a fire started in its engine bay.

That incident occurred approaching the seven-hour mark, barely three minutes after the sister #55 car of Jonathan Bomarito, Harry Tincknell and Olivier Pla stopped with a fuel leak.

Speaking ahead of the Sebring 12 Hours, Mazda North America's director of motorsports and team development John Doonan said: "Daytona was a record-setting moment for us as a programme, as well as the records that fell at Daytona. We're really proud of that.

"But obviously [we're] nowhere near satisfied based on what happened in the race.

"We had some unfortunate luck. Unexpected luck. But we know exactly what went wrong, it's been addressed."

Doonan said he was optimistic about Mazda's chances heading into this weekend's race based on Multimatic's work on the RT24-P and the performance the car showed at Sebring last year.

The #55 was in contention for victory in the final hour of the race until it failed to restart at its final pitstop.

"We had a great couple of test days here [at Sebring] two weeks ago, so I think we enter the race with a strong feel of our potential," added Doonan.

"We ran really well here last year, darn near won the thing.

"From my standpoint, Multimatic has truly transformed the racecar, especially over the last 18 months or so, leading into last year's campaign.

"We did a significant amount of testing in the winter, we showed in Daytona we had the pace in the package.

"Now it's about executing, putting all the pieces together."

Tincknell added: "If you look at our performance at Daytona last year and how we came to Sebring and competed right at the front the whole way, led the race for a long time, [were] right at the front going into the last pitstop... we made a big step forward at this track, we were at the front on merit and we could have won the race.

"Daytona this year was exactly the same. We qualified on pole, ran at the front on merit. [It was] disappointing not to finish but we found the issues, we're moving forward.

"We know the car should suit [this] track and we're going to try and repeat last year but finish it off in that last stint."

Zdroj: autosport.com