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"What&amp;#039;s it like to drive a priceless, four-rotored piece of Mazda history on the weekends? Ask Jeremy Barnes, the transplanted Brit who heads Mazda North America&amp;#039;s public relations department, and the amateur racer can&amp;#039;t help but let an ear-to-ear grin begin to rise. Along with a dozen other Mazda colleagues, Barnes spent last weekend at the aptly-names Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion where five of the brand&amp;#039;s four-rotor rockets were on display. Thankfully, the static display in the paddock came to life twice a day as the cars were raced in the IMSA group, where Barnes is entrusted to wring the neck of the tubeframe 1991 RX-7 IMSA GTO, and as he shares below and in the video, each session in the flame-spitting beast is filled with sensory overload. - Marshall Pruett  First off, it&amp;#039;s hot. And heavy. And loud. And all in a very, very, VERY good way. To start the car when it&amp;#039;s cold is a bit of a production\u2014the ECU is a bit primitive, so you have to teach it what closed and wide-open throttle looks like each time you turn the master-switch on. It goes like this: switch master on, hold throttle wide open, turn ignition on and off three times, turn ignition back to on position and hold throttle wide open for a 15-count, release throttle for another 15-count, apply slight throttle and press the starter button. It usually barks right to life if it&amp;#039;s warm, but takes a bit of cranking if it&amp;#039;s cold or hasn&amp;#039;t been run in a while.   Once everything&amp;#039;s warm (150 degrees F oil and water, minimum), move the gear lever to first gear (over to you and back, like an old Porsche 911) and release the clutch. It&amp;#039;s heavy, but better now than it used to be since we replaced the throw-out bearing. It&amp;#039;s amazing what modern hydraulics can do. Once you&amp;#039;re underway, make sure to get the tires thoroughly warm. With the short wheelbase, it&amp;#039;ll swap ends on you in the blink of an eye on cold tires, and with very limited steering lock, it&amp;#039;s all-but impossible to catch it. Once the tires are warm, and the gearbox and diff are warm (off the pegs on the two gauges), you can start pushing. Once the tires are warm, the grip levels are huge.  The gear lever is really heavy, and you can see that in the video. It&amp;#039;s a dog-ring &amp;#039;box, so you just lift about halfway off the throttle to change up through the gears, no clutch. With first offset to the left, second through fifth are in what would usually be the standard 1-4 H-pattern, meaning it&amp;#039;s hard to miss the gears you use most. I don&amp;#039;t use first on the track, as all it does is spin the rear wheels. I use the clutch on the way down the box (I never skip gears), mostly as a matter of timing. You still have to match revs to get it in gear though, and you can hear that quite clearly.  Back in the day, the four-rotor 13J engine would have been good for 9000 rpm and change, but we shift at 8500 to make sure we maximize our time between rebuilds\u2014the car&amp;#039;s won all the championships it&amp;#039;s going to win already. There&amp;#039;s a fair amount of steering kickback. The brakes are heavy. This is no shrinking violet of a racecar. Either you&amp;#039;re in charge, or it is. The car doesn&amp;#039;t really mind being told what to do, but it&amp;#039;s equally as happy telling you what it&amp;#039;s going to do next. It brakes really well\u2014I&amp;#039;m on the brakes a touch before the 4 marker going into Turn 2 at Mazda Raceway\u2014but it doesn&amp;#039;t particularly like aggressive trail-braking, and will spin quickly if you&amp;#039;re on the brakes too long into the corner. Turn-in is super, but, for some reason, it has a bit of a push from the apex to the exit in slow and medium speed corners. Again, you can see this in Turn 2 and Turn 3 especially. It&amp;#039;s pretty good in the quick corners, however. With &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; 640 hp on tap in a 2100 or so pound car, it&amp;#039;s not as quick as most of the GTP and Group C cars we run against a lot these days, but it makes up for it, as it did in the day, between the start of the brake zone and the exit.  All in, it&amp;#039;s an incredible car to drive. I was a corner worker in the &amp;#039;80s and &amp;#039;90s, and remember watching this car race at Del Mar. It is one of the reasons I&amp;#039;m such a fan today, and one of the reasons I started racing back in the late &amp;#039;90s. It&amp;#039;s a pleasure and an honor to drive it every time the opportunity comes up.       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a5268/racing-race-cars-mazda-four-rotor-imsa-rx7/>