Daytona 24 Hours testing: Joest Mazdas lead final day of 'Roar'
The Joest-run Mazda team set the pace in the closing stages of the Daytona 24 Hours' 'Roar Before the 24' pre-race test
The Mazdas had alternated with the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac that features Fernando Alonso in its line-up on top of the times through Friday and Saturday daytime, before Jonathan Bomarito led a Mazda one-two in Saturday's night-time session.
Sunday's first test then ended with another Mazda one-two, Harry Tincknell beating team-mate Oliver Jarvis by 0.392 seconds.
Tincknell took only four laps in the 65-minute session to lay down a 1m34.224s tour of the 3.56-mile Daytona road course in the #55 Mazda RT24-P, the fastest time of the test so far.
His time remained 0.6s clear of the field until Jarvis's last run in the #77 Mazda drew him within four-tenths and completed the team's domination.
Then in the subsequent 'qualifying' session held to determine pitboxes and pitstalls for the race, both Mazdas unofficially broke the track's 26-year-old lap record at Daytona's road course with 1m33.398s and 1m33.423s lap times.
Fastest time from a Cadillac in Sunday's main test session was delivered by the newly part-time Eric Curran in Action Express Racing's #31 DPi-V.R, his best effort edging team-mate Filipe Albuquerque by just 0.064s.
Jordan Taylor sent the WTR Cadillac into fifth, while Romain Dumas was sixth in the Nissan, now run by CORE autosport, 0.7s off the top time.
Juan Pablo Montoya and Ricky Taylor were seventh and eighth in the two Acura Team Penske ARX-05s, both of them also within eight tenths of the top time.
DragonSpeed's Ben Hanley was top of the four-car LMP2 contingent, impressively recording a laptime only 1.7s from the fastest DPi time.
Richard Westbrook clocked a 1m43.083s to top GT Le Mans for Ford in the first session. He was a full 0.423s clear of the second placed Corvette C7.R, yet still the whole nine-car class was covered by only 0.77s.
A final one-hour session took place in the afternoon following the mock qualifying session, but it featured a reduced field as many packed up and those who ran focused on race set-ups.
Times were two seconds slower than in qualifying practice, but Loic Duval, CORE autosport and Nissan could take some heart from the 1m35.176s lap time that allowed them to beat Bomarito's Mazda to the top spot.
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