Subaru Tecnica International (STI) will enter the new WRX NBR Challenge 2023 in this year’s 24 Hours of Nürburgring on May 20.
The 51st Nurburgring endurance race will mark Subaru’s 14th entry into the event. It has achieved podium positions in previous years and plans to take out the top spot this year.
The vehicle will race in the ‘SP4T’ class which is for vehicles with turbo engines between 2.0L and 2.6L of displacement.
Naoki Shibuya will be in charge of development of the new race car, while Carlo van Dam (Netherlands), Tim Schrick (Germany), Hideki Yamauchi (Japan), and Takuto Iguchi (Japan) will be driving for the team.
The total length of the Nürburgring circuit is around 25km with a 300m elevation, located in the Eifel region of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Subaru has developed the new race car on the Subaru Global Platform – which underpins the bulk of the company’s current range, including the WRX road car.
It’s powered by a version of the 2.4-litre horizontally-opposed turbocharged Boxer engine from the standard road car, which is paired with Subaru’s Symmetrical AWD system.
Developments to the race car’s engine include larger ball joints on the front lower arms, and a revised layout to accomodate for a larger muffler to meet driving noise restrictions and improve aerodynamics. It outputs 280kW and 590Nm, an increase of 78kW and 240Nm compared to the standard WRX.
The team has also installed a lighter and more rigidly balanced flexible drawer tower bar bracket, and at 1290kg the WRX NBR Challenge 2023 weighs around 300kg less than the road-legal WRX.
Subaru will bring eight service technicians from dealerships across Japan to support the team in Germany on race day.
The full vehicle line-up for the SP4T class is yet to be announced, but it’s expected the segment grid will consist of Porsche Cayman 718 and BMW M240i race cars.
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