No. 77 Mazda DPi to Race After Heavy Practice Accident

Photo: John Dagys

The No. 77 Mazda RT24-P will race in Sunday’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen following Rene Rast’s heavy accident in practice on Saturday morning.

Rast escaped injury in the high-flying crash, which was triggered following contact with the No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Patrick Lindsey in the closing stages of the 60-minute session.

While initially feared to have been the end of the weekend for the No. 77 entry of Rast and co-drivers Oliver Jarvis and Tristan Nunez, further inspection from the Mazda Team Joest crew revealed no tub damage was sustained to the Multimatic-built prototype.

“We’re fortunate in that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Mazda Motorsports director John Doonan told Sportscar365.

“We had to go through a process as we always do. We already have all the spares we need. It’s just time and working with our partners at Multimatic and the race team to get it ready. We’ll have a competitive car on the grid tomorrow.

“We started at the back at Sebring with both cars and we had a chance to win that race. Tomorrow’s a long race and hopefully we’ll have the same chance.”

Doonan wouldn’t elaborate on the cause of the accident, other than confirming contact made between the two cars.

“We’ll leave the decision up to the officials on whose fault it was,” he said. “The bottom line is that the driver was OK and the car is raceable for tomorrow.”

Both the No. 77 Mazda DPi and the No. 73 Park Place Porsche missed qualifying due to the damage, with Lindsey posting on social media an on-board video of the incident.

 

We will miss qualifying today in our @parkplaceracing car. Sucks for the boys, I’m crushed. Glad @renerast is okay, but not sure what the strategy was here. 👎😢 #sahlens6hrs @imsa_racing @porsche_dallas @miravistajet #racing #porsche #wtfisthis #upsidedownmazda #done

A post shared by Patrick Lindsey (@plindsey73) on Jun 30, 2018 at 6:41am PDT

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John