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Brent explains: “While I enjoy racing, my real passion is engine building – especially if I’m given the opportunity to push myself and do something really cool.
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Funnily enough, the Castrol EDGE-sponsored machine wasn’t originally built to fulfill any desire to cut quick ETs on the strip, but rather to serve as an R&D tool. There’s nothing more testament to Brent’s talents than CBR’s rolling business card – a ’71 Mazda RX-2. Thanks to the engine building exploits of its owner and sole full-time employee, Brent Curran, within the space of a few short years CBR went from virtual anonymity to one of New Zealand’s most respected performance rotary workshops.Īlthough still young, Brent’s craft has been quickly honed by an unrelenting quest to build wilder and more powerful rotary engines for street and competition applications. Of those, the quickest two bear something in common… Today, out of New Zealand’s five top-ranked import drag machines, three are Mazda rotary-powered. But today I’m here to talk about an old school Mazda and its meteoric rise to the top of the Kiwi rotary drag racing ranks.Īlthough New Zealand has always enjoyed a large and enthusiastic rotary community, when it comes to drag racing, only in recent times have the country’s more serious rotary-powered racers begun catching up with the rest of the world.
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Then there’s Robbie Ward’s RIPS Racing Nissan RB30-powered front-engine-dragster, which recently joined the sub-seven-second ET ranks running a 6.99. Rod Harvey’s Rayglass Boats 2JZ-powered RWD Toyota Celica is still right up there in the hunt for the outright quickest sport compact title (6.38) having run a best ET to date of 6.40. Reece McGregor’s Heat Treatments Racing Nissan Skyline GT-R still holds the coveted title of the ‘world’s quickest 4WD’ with a 7.57 ET set back in 2006. In SuperGT competition, RE Amemiya and its various sponsors campaigned rotary-powered RX7s up through the 2010 season.New Zealand might be a little country at the bottom of the world, but when it comes to import drag racing Kiwis have had their fair share of big results.
#Rotary motor drag racing drivers
The 13B-REW powered professional drag racers like Abel Ibarra and Adam Saruwatari into Import Drag Racing’s spotlight in the 90s while D1GP drivers Youichi Imamura, Ryuji Miki and Masao Suenaga drifted the rotary platform into the 2000s. Nevertheless, rotaries continue to shine in motorsports, powering drag, drift and circuit cars around the globe. The apex seals (likened to piston rings) are sensitive to detonation, it is fuel inefficient and spark plug life is dramatically shorter compared to piston engines. Its modular design makes increasing displacement possible by adding rotors and housings and employing a new eccentric shaft (the rotary equivalent of a crankshaft.) Despite its high output-per-liter, it is not without its shortcomings. The rotary’s high exhaust energy can drive massive turbochargers that help to raised performance even further. However, what set this engine apart was it’s the twin sequential turbochargers, high engine speeds and power output. There were 15 variants of rotary engines that preceded the 13B-REW. This was one of the great features of the rotary engine that aided in the handling prowess that the RX7 had come to be known for. The lightweight, low profile rotary engine design allows the engine to sit low and behind the front wheels, helping to lower the center of gravity. Mazda is the only manufacturer to invest and put into mass production rotary engines for passenger cars, and the turbocharged 13B-REW earned recognition for propelling the Mazda RX7 FD3S. The only non-piston combustion engine on the market happens to offer tremendous power potential and high specific output, putting the turbocharged Mazda 13B-REW in the sixth spot on the list. 6| Mazda 13B-REW Mazda’s Turbocharged Rotary says, “No Pistons, No Problem”…