Aristotelis said: ↑
The history of this car and its performance is not so easy to judge out of simple laptimes on websites.
First of all, at the Suzuka the C9 was running the sprint version and the 962 is the short tail and MUCH more evolved than the one we have now in AC (ST is 1986). The C9 sprint has almost double the downforce of the C9 LeMans version of AC. The 962 ST of 1990 has more downforce and less drag and much better tyres than AC 1986 version.
On top of that, Mazda's team principal of the era was notoriously famous of ordering the cars to never push in qualify and during the race. For them, the most important thing was to finish the race, then look at the position.
It makes sense as the car didn't had a turbocharged engine and so couldn't raise the boost to get extra power, and didn't had the big engine of the Jaguars with plenty of torque from low revs. On top of that, it had even less total downforce because it was shorter and thus had a smaller diffuser area in total, in comparison to the other cars. Japan engineers thought the increased agility from the lower CoG and lighter mechanical parts, would give better tyre wear which linked to the lower fuel consumption could make them more competitive.
The only time Mazda's team principal ordered a full attack was for just one car at the LeMans race of 1991.
They knew it was probably the last time they could compete officially before either Mazda management would kill the project, or LeMans authorities would withdrew the rules handicap in favour of the wankel engine, so they went all in. Amazingly enough, even though the car couldn't exactly match the pace of the Mercedes, they could stay ahead of the Jaguars and the rest of the pack, by matching the performance and/or running less pit stops than their adversaries. When the Mercedes started failing, the Mazda reliability gave them the once in a life time opportunity and they got it.
So all in all, the 1991 787B Mazda against the LeMans Mercedes and Jaguars had:
- a top speed deficit,
- a power deficit (especially in torque and delivery)
- a slight downforce advantage (they run the same floor and slight modifications on the wings, so it wasn't that much different than the sprint version)
- a good fuel consumption and tyre wear advantage.
On the other hand against the sprint versions of the opponents, they were hopeless!
So it makes sense that the 1991 Mazda 787B, is tiny bit faster at Monza, than a Mercedes C9 LM version of 1989 driven at race boost, and the 1986 version of 962ST.
It would be slower (2-3 secs at LeMans qualify lap) from a 1991 Mercedes C9LM or C11 from 1991 and slightly slower (1sec) from a 1991 962 which by the time was running heavily modified short tails even at leman (client cars)
It will be hopeless against a 1991 C9 sprint version or even worse a C11 sprint version and a 962 ST of 1991, simply eaten alive.