---MazdaSpeed Team Europe FC RX-7 Spa 24 '90---
Fictional Livery Concept
Mazda has been all around the world in regards to motorsport by the time that 1990 rolled around. Win in the Daytona 24 in'79, raced in Group B in the mid-80's, won the Spa 24 hour race in '82 with Tom Walkinshaw, and won in it's class several times at Le Mans. Even won the Australian Touring Car Championship with Allan Moffat in '84. However,one of the series that they had no appearance in at all was the most popular touring car series at that time: Group A. With the demise of Group B in 1986, where is a team to go and race? With a new generation FC RX-7 now available, who's to say?
Thus starts the build-up process. Bringing in the Mazdaspeed team, with all their racing and tuning experience, they got their hands on one of the pre-production FC RX-7 bodys, stripped it down, modified/strengthened the chassis, added the needed rigidity, added widened fenders, installed a Limited slip differential, and put independent double-wishbone suspension all around. Then into the Group A rulebook, they see that the regs will allow turbocharging multiplier by 1.4x, which made the now very nimble car able to run at almost ~900kg, and have 8 inch width tires. With the proper tuning and testing, the re-ported fuel-injected 13B twin-rotor would've produced 430BHP @ 9200 PRM! A proper racing machine indeed.
In this what-If, the team runs under the name 'Mazdaspeed Team Europe' running Michelin tires, and employs two drivers from the rally team: Belgian Grégoire De Mévius and Spaniard Jesús Puras Vidal de la Peña (or Jesús Puras for short), and American racer and at-the-time TWR Jaguar driver Price Cobb, which in the future would be running in the IMSA GTO class for Mazda Motorsports in 1991, and in elevate to the GTP class in 1992, with the RX-792P. In some way, this would be an early audition of his skills on display.
A car, especially one that is preceded with a generation that brought Mazda into the global limelight, would be a beneficial platform to build into one that could take it to the giants of Ford/Eggenberger, Nissan/ Gibson Motorsports, BMW/Schnitzer, Toyota/Tom's, even Mercedes-Benz/AMG. We know the roll Mazda was on coming into the 90's was not stopping anytime soon, and to see such a car being built, in a decade with a win at the Le Mans 24 Hours, a major win in the year preceding would be a helluva wake-up call. The small team from Hiroshima has come a-knocking!
Photo Credit:@24HuresdeLoL/Gran Turismo 7
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