The Subaru BRZ 'Cup Car Basic' Is Here And (Almost) Ready To Race
Live in Japan? Want to take the new BRZ racing? Don’t worry about gouging out bits of your interior to accommodate a roll cage - Subaru has done the hard work for you. This is the BRZ ‘Cup Car Basic’. Along with a similarly sub-titled Toyota GR86 counterpart, it’s prepped to race in the newly established Toyota Gazoo Racing GR86/BRZ Cup.
Inside is a six-point cage to protect the driver should the worst happen. The driver’s seat has a six-point harness, and should you fancy taking someone for a spin pre-season, the passenger seat is still there, albeit with a normal three-point belt.
The seat and curtain airbags are gone, as is a lot of the sound insulation. To ensure the BRZ can withstand a series of fast laps on the bounce without anything getting too toasty, there’s a new oil cooler plus some new cooling fins on the rear differential.
Otherwise, it’s mechanically identical to the regular BRZ, featuring the new 2.4-litre flat-four engine. As a reminder, the naturally-aspirated unit is good for 223bhp at 7000rpm, with peak torque of 184lb ft felt from 3700.
There are still a few bits and pieces competitors will need to sort before going wheel to wheel. For instance, as good as those 16-inch steel rims look, they’ll need to be swapped for 17-inch alloys shod in the series’ Dunlop Direzza control tyres. Oh, and it’ll need some race numbers and a festooning of stickers.
The price for all this in Japan (no availability elsewhere, we’re afraid) is 3,338,500 yen, which works out at around £21,400. Production is capped at 30 units.
The race series is set to compete in will take place exclusively in Japan, with the five-round 2022 season kicking off at Fuji Speedway on 16 July.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Steel wheels?
They’re going to get replaced anyway, they did the same with the old 86 RC and BRZ RA.
Damn this is good (successor of the old GT86 RC and BRZ RA), but it’s a bit shit they capped the production to only 30 units because I don’t remember the old 86 RC/BRZ RA to have had a strict production cap.