- Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson said that the next-generation Lexus sports coupe will be developed with GT3 racing in mind from the start.
- The current Lexus RC F GT3 race car was created as an “afterthought,” hampering its on-track abilities.
- Wilson hinted that the car will be heavily influenced by the Toyota GR GT3 concept shown earlier this year.
While the Lexus RC—first introduced back in 2014—is a sharp-looking car, the coupe has always been a bit on the porky side. That extra weight not only affects the road car’s performance but has also hampered the car’s motorsports efforts in the GT3 class. At the Daytona 500 last week, Car and Driver spoke with Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson and learned that we may not have to wait much longer for a more dynamic next-generation Lexus coupe built with a focus on racing.
The current RC road car was not developed with motorsports in mind—Wilson described the current RC F GT3 race car as an “afterthought.” This has compromised its on-track performance. The RC F is heavier than its GT3 competition and has a larger frontal area, increasing drag and hindering straight-line top speed. “What we’ve all come to learn is that’s not the way you bring a GT3 car to market,” Wilson explained. “Before you put your first line on paper, you decide you’re going to race that car and that shapes the design parameters, the performance parameters of that production car.”
Having learned that lesson, Wilson suggested that the next Lexus sports coupe will be developed from the outset with a motorsports intent. And while he stressed that no official announcement has been made, he hinted that the car will draw heavily from the Toyota GR GT3 concept seen earlier this year at the Tokyo Auto Salon. “It’s fairly safe to connect the dots and suggest that that could be a precursor to the next global GT3 car for Lexus,” Wilson acknowledged.
Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division claims there will be running prototype of the GR GT3 concept by the end of the year. The prototype will be powered by an internal combustion engine, as hinted by the concept’s side-exit exhaust pipe behind the front wheels, and it’s likely that the next-generation Lexus production car will have a hybrid powertrain. We’ll likely get more hints at what form the road and race cars will take when the running prototype hits the track, and luckily we won’t have to wait too long to see the final product, with Wilson saying the race car should arrive “hopefully in a couple of years.”
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Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
