Subaru teases BRZ-based GT300 race car
The 2022 Subaru BRZ is due out by this time next year, but between then and now is a full season of racing that needs to be addressed. Subaru’s answer is an all-new BRZ GT300 for Japan’s Super GT, the country’s premier touring car series. The GT300 appears to be based on the upcoming, all-new BRZ.
We’re already fans of the updated styling of Subaru’s rear-drive, lightweight sports car, but what vehicle doesn’t look its best after being stretched and pulled in the wind-tunnel for touring car duty? The carbon-composite widebody is draped over a set of massive Dunlops, and downforce is the clear priority throughout the new bodywork (see huge wing and diffuser). During a livestream interview with a group of STI’s drivers, Super GT racers Takuto Iguchi and Hideki Yamauchi introduced the new car in a short clip taken at Fuji Speedway. It’s not much, but we do get to hear the new flat-four mill scream down Fuji’s nearly mile-long front stretch. That new engine in this GT300, by the way, is something of a mystery.
Since the BRZ and Toyota 86 have entered touring car racing, it’s done so with the decades-old EJ platform, instead of the new FA-series of direct-injected flat-fours in Subaru’s current fleet. The first generation BRZ GT300 utilized a turbocharged 2.0-liter variant based on the old WRC EJ20, modified for endurance racing and said to have made around 300 hp and 330 lb-ft with the restrictor. It was the smallest displacement engine in Super GT. With the EJ’s recent retirement, it’s likely that the GT300 will move over to the turbocharged FA flat-four expected under the hood of the upcoming WRX STI, but what that final configuration looks like remains to be seen. Subaru was tight-lipped, only promising during the livestream to release more details soon.
