This is the Statt Mann Baby!! Time to Scatt a little bit.
Besides the driver personalities and their competition with each other, I love people who test motorsports technology.
Like the technology you’re hearing from the four rotor engine that’s in the Mazda RX7 of New Zealand’s Mad Mike Whiddet.
For those of you who don’t know, normally a Mazda rotary has two rotors. Mike has four. It’s like having an extra engine. He finished third in the New Zealand drift championship and that was enough to get him invited to the Red Bull World Championships in Long Beach this weekend.
But who cares about results when you drive a car that sounds like a cross between an F1 and MotoGP machines.
The engine itself looks like a muscled up motorcycle engine but the appeal to everyone listening this weekend was that beautiful sound. His crew chief says the engine is only turning at nine thousand RPM with maybe a blast to twelve thousand. It sounds more like fifteen thousand plus especially when Mad Mike initiated his drift at 100+ miles an hour in Long Beach.
I’m not a techie but I appreciate someone who takes the road less traveled in motorsports like a four rotor Mazda. Not another American V8. Not another turbocharged four cylinder Japanese buzz bomb.
Simple injected rotary power times four. Beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Earth, Wind & Fire.
Almost.
Peace.