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Mazda Motorsports Media Day
By Khiem Dinh
Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing. All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.
For the better part of a decade, Mazda Motorsports has hosted a media day highlighting their racing activities. They also bring out some pretty cool hardware from their racing history. This year, the headliner of the show was the new SKYACTIV-D ('D' stands for diesel if you hadn't figured that out already) racing in Grand-Am. Mazda Motorsports not only showcased the car, but also had Sylvain Tremblay of SpeedSource along with one of his engineers to do a tech deep dive. Follow along to find out a few of the details on the new SKYACTIV-D power plant along with some gratuitous pictures of their other racing hardware.
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| Front and center was the SKYACTIV-D Mazda6 Grand-Am car. Look beyond it though, and there's some really cool hardware back there. |
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| How can you not love the Mazda 787 with the 4-rotor? Check out the NACA ducts and air openings feeding heat exchangers down the driver's side of the car. |
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| A view of the driver's side from the rear shows the exit path of the air going through a heat exchanger. |
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| A heat exchanger is mounted in the nose of the car with the air going through it being dumped over the top of the car. Dumping the air on the top-side of the car should help reduce front-end lift. |
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| The right side of the car has some other shenanigans going on with the exhaust exiting the side of the car before the rear wheel. |
