Whoop, There It Is — (Mazda Le Mans Win, 1991)

In this episo… ah, screw it. Cut to the chase: Do you know what a Mazda R26B rotary sounds like?

Four rotors of fury! The littlest beer keg that could! The 700-horse shrieker from the first Japanese car to win Le Mans!

BEEOWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP! 

Except… louder. Nastier. You hear that noise even once, it makes a bee-line for the whoopy-monkey core of the human brain and lives there forever.

So we got ourselves here yep a story about that.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history. In this case, the time an underfunded Japanese carmaker and a strange little engine design went to France and slayed 200-mph giants.

RELATED TRIVIA: Sam once track-tested a real live Mazda 787. Ross used to own Mazda RX-7. And in 2014 and 2015, Jeff was competition director for the factory-backed Mazda SpeedSource diesel IMSA prototypes.

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CORRECTION: Sam got the location of Hiroshima wrong here; it's actually quite far from Tokyo and a large city on its own. That was off-the-cuff brain fart and not from his notes, please forgive us. (What's more: Sam has been to Japan multiple times and knows better.)

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver, a bestselling author, and a world-renowned performance coach. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning writer and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the meatbag at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.