Over a three-day period from January 3rd-5th, a joint test was held ahead of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season-opener, the 24 Hours of Daytona. Mazda USA's official team, SpeedSource, ran two of the new Mazda LM P2 SKYACTIV-D Racing cars in public for the first time.

The team, which in 2013 brought the GRAND-AM GX-class manufacturer's championship to Mazda with SKYACTIV-D Racing came to the joint test days with the intention of further tuning the four-cylinder, 2.2-liter SKYACTIV-D Racing diesel engine and enhancing its performance. The engine is mounted to a Lola 12/80 chassis (Multimatic). The drivers were, in car #70, Sylvain Tremblay and Tom Long, and in car #07, Joel Miller and Tristan Nunez. On the first day, January 3rd, testing took place in harsh conditions as the East Coast was hit by an exceptionally cold spell, with temperatures rising no higher than 6 degrees. The two Mazda LM P2 SKYACTIV-D Racing cars completed the day's program cautiously, while ironing out minor problems. Issues that don't arise during bench testing or in private tests do occur during this sort of formal test. After iterations of tuning and repairs in the workshop, the times achieved on this day were not very satisfying. On day two, four practice runs - morning, early afternoon, evening, and night - were organized, and the two brand new cars will gradually progress to being able to string the runs together consecutively. In particular, in the night segment, the run was virtually trouble-free, and the challenges also became clear. On the third and final day of official testing, it was the sort of fine, warm day you expect of Florida. In the morning session, running for 1 hour 45 minutes, both cars ran for virtually the whole period, and were able to handle all the prescribed test items.

After the test was completed, Mazda USA's motorsports director John Doonan commented “We expected that if we could come here one month out, do the testing, and work out the minor issues that come up in the early stages like we saw here, then we could be set up for a fast time. Still, we did our best in the time we were given, and we were able to bring the two new-model prototype machines here. I'm very grateful to the SpeedSource engineers and mechanics who devoted a great deal of time to getting the machines ready, working until late both before and after Christmas. We'll take the data we've obtained here and use it over the remaining three weeks to improve the machines, and then come back here again.”