In only its fourth race, the all-new Mazda6, powered by a production-based SKYACTIV-D Clean Diesel engine, scored a win in the Rolex Grand-Am GX race at Road Atlanta. Joel Miller and Andrew Carbonell drove the #00 Visit Florida Racing Mazda6 to the win, with team-mates Sylvain Tremblay and Tom Long finishing third in the similar #70 SpeedSource Mazda6 SKYACTIV-D. It was a three-way battle for most of the race with a Porsche Cayman splitting the two Mazdas.
This win represented a day of firsts for Grand-Am competition and for Mazda Motorsports. This is the first-ever win for a diesel-powered car in Grand-Am competition. It also marked the first win for the all-new Mazda6 in any race series. It was the first Grand-Am race win for drivers Joel Miller and Andrew Carbonell. Miller is a former Mazda Motorsports Scholarship winner, having won the Skip Barber National Championship in 2007. Carbonell has been racing Mazdas with Freedom Autosport for many years, and was part of the team that delivered the 2011 Continental Tire ST Manufacturers Championship to Mazda. Carbonell was substituting for Miller’s usual teammate, Tristan Nunez, who had a schedule conflict with another race in Long Beach.
