The 2019 24 Hours of Daytona is just days away, and at Velocity Mazda, our eyes are on Mazda Team Joest. Mazda has been racing in the Prototype class since the founding of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and this year we’re already shattering records.
Mazda Team Joest 2019 Lineup
This year’s team is going to be hard to beat, with a mix of racing veterans and talented new faces behind the wheel of RT24-Ps The team finished 2018 with a second and third place at Petit Le Mans. Then, they spent the off-season honing skills and refining the Soul Red Crystal Mazdas for the year ahead.
On this year’s team, Jonathan Bomarito enters his eighth season with Mazda. He and his partner Harry Tincknell drove the No.55 Castrol Mazda RT24-P in 2018. Oliver Pla, a race winner in Petit Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship joins Bomarito and Tincknell.
Tristan Nunez and Oliver Jarvis are back as primary drivers for the No.77 Mazda RT24-P. Timo Bernhardt will join them for the Michelin Endurance Cup event. Also, Rene Rast will be back for the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring.
“There is no question that the level of competition in IMSA continues to rise every year,” says John Doonan, director of Mazda Motorsports. “Class rule separation between the DPi and LMP2 cars means some adjustments heading into 2019, so everyone at AER, Multimatic, and Mazda Team Joest have been working extremely hard to be prepared with our two Mazda RT24-Ps.
“The cars have performed incredibly well throughout our winter testing program and we are very much looking forward to kicking things off at Daytona.”
Earlier This Year
Mazda’s team started the year by breaking records. At the Daytona Roar Before the 24 test session, the Mazda RT24-P team set lap times that broke records others have been trying to break since 1993, when Toyota AAR’s Eagle MK III topped timing sheets.
The official record time is 1m33.875s. Oliver Jarvis came in a few tenths quicker at 1m33.398s. Class regulations between 2018 and 2019 allowed a change in tire suppliers from Continental to Michelin and a class split that allowed LMP2 cars to turn up the power a little bit.
Jarvis said the No. 77 Mazda Team Joest car “felt incredible… You could really push the car to its limits, and that’s what us drivers live for, that feeling of getting everything out of the car.”
24 Hours of Daytona
The 2019 24 Hours of Daytona was previously known as the 2019 Rolex 24 at Daytona. It’s an International Motorsports Association sanctioned 24-hour endurance race at the Daytona International Speedway. The race is the first of 12 in the 2019 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the first of four rounds for the 2019 Michelin Endurance Cup.
When and Where to Watch
NBC presents live coverage of the 57th running of 24 Hours of Daytona starting with a one-hour season preview on Thursday, January 24 at 2 p.m. Eastern (3 p.m. if you’re in Tyler, Texas). Then, live coverage of qualifying runs from 3-5 p.m. Eastern later that day. The event itself stretches from Saturday, January 26 through Sunday, January 27.
Also, the race will definitely be on at the dealership. Join us at Velocity Mazda to watch!
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