The past and present on display in Monterey

Memorable Mazda race cars from IMSA’s early years will be on display at the Monterey Motorsports Reunion

As Mazda celebrates three straight wins for the Mazda RT24-P in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, it can also look back on past accomplishments in IMSA. This year’s famed Monterey Motorsports Reunion at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca celebrates 50 years of the International Motor Sports Association, and Mazda has been a large part of that history dating back to 1970. To bring that celebration to life, Mazda Motorsports will be assembling a variety of cars from its IMSA history for both static display and on-track running.

“As we looked across our collection and private-owner cars -- people with Mazda history, but the cars are not owned by us -- we wanted to provide a cross section of our IMSA history with key milestones in mind,” explains John Doonan, Director, Mazda Motorsports. “We’re going to have a combination of static display cars and cars that are on track competing.”

Mazda’s history begins with RX-2s in the IMSA RS sedan championship, includes eight championships in GTU and GTO, and extends to its current success in Daytona Prototype international. In that static display will be several examples of winning cars from the early days.