Quote:
Originally Posted by knighty
in the middle of last year, I did say on this forum on another post that I highly suspect these guys from SpeedSource have bitten off far more than they can chew.......looking at the words recently coming out of this project during the Daytona test, I am suspecting a serious case of smoke and mirrors........and when you compare this to their last effort it does look like its doomed to fail, but I'm happy to be proven wrong........based on the fact they are approx 10 seconds of the front pace LMP2 cars I suspect they have a lot less than the 456bhp they are quoting.......I suspect around 350bhp........to be on the pace they will need just over 500bhp.......this is totally and completely unrealistic form a 4 cylinder 2.2 cylinder production based turbo-diesel engine, even with a huge state of tune, really I feel quite qualified to say this as some of you know what I do for a living......really they should have used a 3.0 V6 TDI base engine, and 500bhp would have been easy........really this is just a bunch of tuners with minimal Mazda involvement, despite all the stickers splashed all over the car........I dont see many Japaneese engineers in their organisation, so its not a full factory Mazda effort.........they talk the talk in the press, but I dont see any credible performance yet, and they have had PLENTY of time to prepare, this could turn into a PR nightmare for Mazda.
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Touche my friend!
Speedsource were lucky that they stumbled into their place with the rotary GT, did a good job and one thinks now that they should have been content being at this level and stayed put.
Clearly I do not know what level of involvement Mazda actually has with the team, but your comments regards the engine probably are correct. People I know have echoed the same that the engine even in roadcar form, is nothing special whatsoever. Are Speedsource the greatest engine builders out there? Don't know that answer, but looking into the goldfish bowl several times at the track last year, it seemed obvious that there appeared to be a fairly large degree of not knowing where to turn next and a chunk of lost people wandering around.
I also read that they commented about going to Le Mans with a class winning car? Hello people, no diesels permitted in LMP2, so far as I am aware?
Anyway, good luck to them in this venture, but one wonders how long Mazda wants to be soooo far off the pace and keep paying for their performance, or lack of it?