Mazda confirms Team Joest partnership into 2020

Amid questions surrounding its vendor for the RT24-P IMSA DPi program, Mazda has confirmed its intent to continue working with Germany’s Joest Racing to start the 2020 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

“Mazda is very excited for the season to get started in January at the Daytona Rolex 24 with Team Joest as our partner,” a Mazda representative told RACER. “It should be an exciting time for both our prototype program and our new TCR effort.”

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Signed to a multi-year contract in the summer of 2017, Mazda Team Joest was charged with taking the underperforming RT24-P program and turning it into a winning operation. Its debut in 2018 was fraught with problems and disappointments, though, as the team went winless and often failed to finish races. Significant changes to the team’s structure followed in 2019 as Multimatic, the RT24-P’s constructor, was entrusted with increased authority over the running and engineering of Mazda’s two-car effort.

Whether the relationship with the Reinhold Joest-owned outfit will remain intact beyond the early stages of the 10-round season is subject to a future update from the Japanese brand’s American arm. Multimatic is tipped to take control of Mazda’s DPi program in the coming months.