This is the Daytona 24 hour winning RX8 in the Homestead pits.

2388 pounds.

Paul Lamar

Very interesting car. The power steering unit is unlike any I've seen.
Do you know anything about it ? I have a 92' Dodge Caravan I'm putting a
diesel in and I would rather take out the power steering rack & pinion
and put a manual rack in, but I can't place with the old style part
cross reference tables... everyone now wants to know make, model, year.

-dave

I might be able to find out tomorrow. It looked very interesting
to me too. Apparently it is electric. I don't know why they did not use
the stock RX8 electric rack and pinion power steering as that
is just plain great.

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Here it is. KYB makes it.

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This is really a sad and frustrating form of racing from an engineering
point of view. Innovation and creativity are severely penalized and
not allowed. This is not real CAR racing. Its more of a show or a charade.
Cars are "competition adjusted" to keep them competitive.

In other words car A, with a 7 liter engine, is forced to carry extra
weight while car B, with a 4 liter engine, can be lighter.

BTW This leads to situations where a heavy car can knock a lighter
car off the track. One could almost race a Sherman tank in this class
and be competitive after being "competition adjusted". Just run over
your adversaries and crush them :)

In the case of the high power to weight ratio rotary engine we all
know and love (Sorry Sylvain :)) it is possible to build a lighter
weight car with better performance.

What happens?

The rotary powered car is forced to carry ballast to hold it back.

One would think in the context of rapidly rising gasoline prices this
racing body would reward attempts made at reducing fuel consumption
by allowing turbo compounds, reducing weight  and other innovative
forms of increasing the efficiency of cars. But no... they would not.
Very short sited on their part. The vast amount of money dumped into this
form of racing could be better spent on increasing the efficiency of
cars and increasing the miles per gallon.

It escapes me why the manufactures supporting this form of car racing
do not understand that. At least in Formula One they are attempting
to recover waste braking energy and feed it back into the system.

Car racing in the world needs to step back in time when racing truly
was a method of improving the car otherwise it is in danger of becoming
irrelevant if not outlawed. That nearly happened in 1973 when
people were waiting in line at gas stations for fuel. Car racing entered
a period of rapid decline at that time.