Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) today announced it has entered into a three-year integrated marketing partnership with the Champ Car Atlantic Championship. source: champcarworldseries.com Beginning in 2006, all Atlantic cars will be powered by a 300-hp 2.3-liter four-cylinder Mazda MZR engine prepared by Cosworth Engineering, mounted in identical Swift 016.a chassis and riding on Yokohama tires. The series, now dubbed "Yokohama Presents the Champ Car Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda," will compete with the cars of the Champ Car World Series on 12 street circuit and permanent road course race weekends throughout North America. All 2006 events will be broadcast on SPEED Channel and Mazda will help sponsor both Atlantic and Champ Car race broadcasts as part of the new agreement. An influx of new teams and the top rising stars in open-wheel racing will add to the excitement of the new-generation Atlantic Championship. The MZR engine was designed by Mazda, and is produced both in Hiroshima, Japan and Hermosillo, Mexico. It is used in the company's MAZDA3, MAZDA5, MAZDA6, MAZDASPEED6, Tribute and B-Series, as well as the Ford Focus, Escape, Fusion and Ranger. "Adding the Atlantic series to the Mazda portfolio is the perfect addition to our open-wheel racing ladder: drivers can start in Club Racing in the steel-chassis rotary-powered Formula Mazda, graduate to the next level in the carbon-fiber-tub professional Formula Mazda, and then to the Mazda-powered Atlantic at the top rung," said Robert Davis, MNAO's senior vice president, product development and quality, and the man responsible for Mazda's North American motorsports programs. Mazda's racing heritage goes back to the 1968 Marathon de la Route, a grueling 84-hour endurance race, where a Mazda Cosmo 110-S finished in fourth place. Since then, Mazda or Mazda-powered vehicles have visited victory circle in virtually every major race or racing series around the globe, including road-racing, rallying, drag racing, sprint cars, autocross and drifting. Mazda's greatest motorsport victory was the winning of the 1991 24-Hours of Le Mans, the only Japanese manufacturer in history to ever achieve such a feat, despite the efforts of other larger and better-funded companies.
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