Seven Pieces Of Eight: Mazda Bringing Fleet Of RX-8’s To Rolex 24 Hours Of Daytona Race

Mazda as always done pretty well in Daytona but this Saturday at the 48th running of the famous 24 hour race Mazda is increasing their chances of a win…by 7!  There will be 7 Mazda RX-8’s in the field this weekend including the highly seasoned Speedsource RX-8 which has already captured wins at Daytona and Patrick Dempsey (AKA “Dr. McDreamy) in a Dempsey racing RX-8.  Should be interesting to see the RX-8’s mixing it up with the inevitable ocean of Porsches on track.  Check out renderings of all 7 entrys in the pic below.

Press Release:

Seven Mazda RX-8 teams are entered in the Rolex 24 for the GT class. Each RX-8 is powered by a 500hp three-rotor Mazda rotary engine.

#30 The Racers Edge RX-8 featuring 2009 MX-5 Cup Champion Todd Lamb and 2009 Atlantic Champion John Edwards

#40 The Dempsey Racing RX-8 featuring America’s fastest actor, Patrick Dempsey.

#41 The second Dempsey Racing RX-8 will be run in conjunction with Team Seattle as a charity fundraiser for a children’s hospital.

#42/43 A pair of Team Sahlen RX-8s. No strangers to Mazda, the Nonnamaker Brothers will be a factor all season long. This is their race debut in an RX-8 in Grand-Am GT competition.

#69 The SpeedSource FXDD RX-8. This team won two races in 2009.

#70 The SpeedSource Castrol Syntec RX-8. The Sylvain Tremblay-led team is looking to repeat their 2008 Rolex win. Joining the team fulltime for 2010 is Jonathan Bomarito. Jonathan is a former Mazda Atlantic Championship Star.