LEXINGTON, Ohio (May 5, 2018) – The Mazda Team Joest Mazda RT24-Ps have locked down the second row for Sunday’s IMSA SportsCar Challenge.

In Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session, the No. 77 Castrol/Modspace Mazda RT24-p driven by Oliver Jarvis qualified in third position for Sunday afternoon’s race. The performance matched the team’s best qualifying performance of the season, which was Harry Tincknell’s third-place performance in qualifying at Long Beach. Jarvis, who is making his first appearance at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, proved to be a quick study of the 2.258-mile circuit as he put the Mazda RT24-P up to third position in the closing stages of the fifteen-minute qualifying session. Jarvis will share the car with Tristan Nunez.

Close behind was Jonathan Bomarito, who used a last-lap flyer to vault the No. 55 Mazda RT24-P to fourth position. Encountering traffic throughout the qualifying session, Bomarito found enough free space on the final lap of the fifteen-minute session to finish just 0.257-sec behind Jarvis. Bomarito will share the car in tomorrow’s race with Spencer Pigot.

Mazda Team Joest will look to better its best result of the season in tomorrow’s IMSA SportsCar Challenge, which was a fourth place at the Grand Prix of Long Beach for Jarvis and Nunez.

The IMSA Sports Car Challenge from Mid-Ohio will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 2 on Sunday, May 6 at 1:00 PM ET.

Mazda Team Joest fans can follow the team at @MazdaMotorsports on all social media platforms.

Quotes

John Doonan, Director, Mazda Motorsports

“This whole program is about making steps forward and even though we were a little bit off the mark yesterday, and dealt with some tough weather conditions, we remained calm. We have the right people with the right skillset doing their jobs and this qualifying session is the result. As we brought this new program together, we have tried to put the right pieces of the puzzle together with the right partners. Multimatic is our vehicle dynamics partner, and the engineering support from those guys put us in the right setup window in preparation for today. The two cars and the drivers work together in debriefs and came together with a setup for qualifying. And our drivers went out and did their jobs with the cars properly engineered by Mazda Team Joest. For me, that’s the magic – when it all comes together like that.”

No. 55 Mazda RT24-P
Jonathan Bomarito

“This was a great performance by Mazda Team Joest to lock out the second row. As a team, we made big gains from the first practice – we didn’t have the best first session, but everybody stayed focused and put their head down. We made some good setup changes for today, the track was better, and we made good progress. The Mazda RT24-P has been very good on the brakes and is inspiring a lot of confidence. The race will be a tough one, there will be lots of traffic, so to be third and fourth today is a great result for Mazda and a good starting point for tomorrow.”

No. 77 Castrol/ModSpace Mazda RT24-P
Oliver Jarvis

“I have to say, I’m really pleased. This was the first qualifying of the year for me, and my first time at Mid-Ohio, and I think third was the maximum that we could hope for. We made some incredible improvements and qualifying went very well. We had a tough day yesterday but we stuck at it, we worked at it as a team and I’m really pleased with the performance. We did a lot of preparation before coming here – I spent time on the Multimatic driving simulator and it plays a big role as it allowed me to learn the track before arriving. We are pleased with third place, but we have a long race ahead of us tomorrow and now we’ll focus on that.”

Mazda Motorsports
Mazda Motorsports boasts the most comprehensive auto racing development ladder system of any auto manufacturer in the world. The Mazda Road to 24 (#MRT24) program offers a number of scholarships to advance drivers up the sports car racing ladder, beginning with the MX-5 Cup series and culminating with the Mazda Prototype team. The Mazda Road to Indy (#MRTI) is a similar program that includes Mazda-powered categories of USF2000, Pro Mazda and Indy Lights. In grassroots road racing, more Mazdas race on any given weekend in North America than any other manufacturer. Follow all of the latest news at MazdaMotorsports.com, @MazdaRacing on Twitter, and MazdaMotorsports on Instagram and Facebook

Mazda North American Operations
Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, California, and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through nearly 700 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City. For more information on Mazda vehicles, including photography and B-roll, please visit the online Mazda media center at InsideMazda.MazdaUSA.com/Newsroom.

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