The Mazda Fan Circuit Meeting took place recently at Okayama International Circuit, located on Mimasaka-city, Okayama, Japan. Around 2,000 Mazda fans gathered and enjoyed watching demonstration runs of the Mazda 787B driven by Mr. Yoshimi Katayama, the legendary Mazda factory driver.

The winter weekend event was run under brilliantly clear skies. It was a cold 4-5 degrees centigrade in the early morning, but during the daytime gradually warmed up in the sunny spots.

After the Mazda 787B was unloaded from its transporter and jacked up in the pit garage, a steadily increasing number of fans came to look at the legendary machine. Once Mr. Katayama's talk show was announced just before 11am, early 300 people swarmed around the pit. Mr. Katayama appeared and then started the talk show. He opened by saying, “My job is to drive the Mazda 787B and demonstrate the car to all the fans as a driver born in western Japan.” Mr. Katayama talked about his many years of experience, covering topics that the public had never heard about, including when he went to endurance races all around the world, demonstrating the durability and reliability of rotary engines. He also related when he tested the 1-rotor-engined Carol, and when he went to talk with the then president of Mazda directly, in a bid to overthrow the GT-R project in a national race, and so on. He also talked about when he drove a model of the i-DM, the Demio SKYACTIVE's fuel efficiency drive gauge, because his driving was very smooth. Many fans looked on in admiration when he related his stories.

From 3 pm, he started the Mazda 787B demonstration run, after conducting a test drive. Mr. Katayama's smooth and powerful throttle work still thrives. The racing 4-rotor sound echoed loudly, all the way to the mountains of Mimasaka, Okayama. After the demo-run, Mr. Katayama said spiritedly, “I don't want to break the car so I didn't run it at full throttle. However, I did get it up to 8,000 rpm on the straight - and I thought that demonstrated the sound of the 787B really well.” On the day, the total number of attendees was around 2,000, including those who came for the Mazda Fan Circuit Meeting. This marks the end of the demonstration runs of the 787B in 2011. Thank you to the 787B for a wonderful 2011.