This year's annual Roadster endurance race took place on September 5th at Tsukuba Circuit. The race has been held every year since the very first Eunos Roadster was introduced making this year's the 26th event. The teams consist of 4 or 5 drivers, mostly journalists and other guests, who are invited to compete in a race lasting 4 hours. This was the first of these endurance races to feature the new Roadster ND model.
Each car is a race prepared 1.5 6-speed manual model with standard engine and mechanical parts and an allocation of 70 litres fuel. The interiors are stripped bare and equipped with a Bride bucket seat with Takata harness, Mazda's own rollcage design, and various other compulsory safety features such as the tow hooks, bonnet pins, and battery isolator switch.
The tyres are 195/50/16 Bridgestone Potenza RE-11, brakes are standard discs and calipers but with uprated pads from Endless along with Endless S-Four brake fluid. Suspension is by Bilstein and includes some height adustment. The engines use Gulf Arrow GT30 0W-30 fully synthetic oil, with Gulf Pro Guard 75W-90 GL5 for the transmission and differential.
The race was eventually won by the J-Wave team in car number 813 (for their radio station 81.3FM) after completing 179 laps in 4:00'10.894.
Also on display at the event was a prototype of the upcoming NR-A version of the new Roadster. It featured black Mazdaspeed seats with matching black Takata harnesses.
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