- Mazda 767B #203 suffered a paddock fire at Laguna Seca.
- Nobody was hurt, but the privateer racer will miss Monterey.
- The team says the historic rotary prototype will be restored.
A historic racing car catching fire is bad enough. When it’s a rotary-powered Mazda prototype that cannot simply be replaced, every second of the video becomes hard to watch. The good news is that nobody was hurt. Better still, the team behind Mazda 767B #203 says this isn’t the end of the car’s story.
The orange-and-green racer was damaged during the Monterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion at Laguna Seca. Footage shows flames rising from the rear of the car as crew members rush in with extinguishers. Ghost Riders, the team that campaigns the car, says #203 will miss the rest of the Reunion activity, but it has already committed to restoring it.
Read: Mazda 787B To Make Demonstration Run At Next Month’s Le Mans 24 Hours
“The car is special to every member of our team, and to history. It will not complete the remainder of the Reunion event, but its story is not over. #203 will be restored once more, and sing again,” the team said in a statement.
Importantly, this isn’t the same car that won Le Mans in 1991. That car was a 787B, chassis 202. Mazda still owns that car and had earlier confirmed that it would also be at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. That said, the car that burned did come in 20th overall there the year before and won the IMSA GTP class. It’s chassis 203 and clearly more than a valuable old race car that happened to catch fire. It’s a survivor with real competition history.
Neither Ghost Riders nor Mazda has said what started the blaze or detailed the scope of the repairs. Thankfully, the most important thing here is that nobody was hurt. After that, it’s good to know the car will live to race another day.
This is terrible.
by u/AcrobaticPermit62 in IMSARacing
