With just four races to go in the fight for the 2021 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship title, a top result in Sunday’s two-hour, 40-minute race at Road America is vital for Mazda Motorsports.
History has shown that the Mazda RT24-P is well-suited to the high-speed Road America track and it needs to be. Every battle in the DPi class this season has been a furiously fast-paced dogfight. Mazda won this race in 2019 but were beaten by Mother Nature in 2020 when a sudden rain storm upended the order while the #77 Mazda was leading.
Sitting in second place in the championship, Harry Tincknell and Oliver Jarvis are aware of the challenge ahead but they are eager to go back into battle at this incredible track.
“Road America is one of the best tracks in the world,” said Tincknell. “It has a good mix of high-speed, flowing corners, straights where you can slipstream and some heavy braking zones, which provide good overtaking opportunities. It has an awesome rhythm to it, with corners like Turn 1, The Carousel and The Kink, which are really fearsome but exciting corners. You need a good all-round car here. It has some big kerbs so you need good damping and we have that with DSSV.
“We have good memories from previous races at Road America, especially from 2019 as it was the scene of the third of the summer hat-trick of wins. That was one of the biggest battles I’ve had in a race. It went down to the final lap and I had to do a triple stint with no air-conditioning but we got the win. We were unlucky last year as we were leading the race but then the heavens opened at the wrong moment and took away the win. We know the car works well at Road America so hopefully we can fight for the victory. We have the speed, we have the team and we have the strategy to get the job done.”
Multimatic Motorsports boss Larry Holt said: “We are really under pressure to produce with the Mazda to try and catch the WTR Acura for the Championship lead. We have the car, the team and the drivers to get it done, it’s going to be all about execution, and I’m fully confident we can and will.”
