Behind the scenes at the GT86 Cup Nurburgring
 

A few weeks back I was in Cologne, Germany for a tour of the Toyota Motorsport facilities. As part of teh weekend, I was a guest of Toyota at VLN4 which is the championship exclusive to the Nurburgring. I was there to get an inside look at the "GT86 Cup" which is the one make series Toyota Motorsports Europe has started since last year. Here's the link to article and I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed the day out!

http://www.autolifers.com/insight-be...-tmg-gt86-cup/

http://www.autolifers.com/wp-content...GT86-Cup-6.jpg

For those of you that haven't heard of it before, the VLN (or "Langstreken Meisterschaft Nurburgring") is a 10 race GT series exclusive to the Nurburgring Nordschleife. The half way point of the championship (which is next weekend actually) is the infamous Nurburgring 24 hour which is like the "Touch Mudder" of endurance races, utter lunacy!
Anyway the championship itself is split into countless sub-classess and championships so it's common to see a McLaren 12C GTE spec car passing something like clio cup car on Dottinger Hohe!



http://www.autolifers.com/wp-content...T86-Cup-30.jpg

The other thing is the grid is PACKED! With about 200 cars racing at the same time, (many more for the 24 hour race), the pit lane is obviously packed. 2-3 cars have to share a box and exclusivity is thrown out the window. As far as I know the top 'Ring specialists in SP9 class "Black Falcon" and "Gt Corse" get a bit more space in their boxes than the smaller teams (given the extra equipment, larger cars etc.) but in general it's a free for all....like the pic above!

Toyota Motorsports GmbH have their own team in SP3 class with a GT86.

http://www.autolifers.com/wp-content...T86-Cup-10.jpg

TMG pretty much approached the staff "OK, here's a car, here's a budget for the year if you want to race. But you have to manage the championship, cars, drivers and budget all on your own time after work. And if you run over budget that has to come from your own pocket". I was lucky enough to spend time with these guys and they are really a top bunch! The drivers were selected from a competition and TMG staff manage everything else. For example, two metal shop workers are the mechanics. Well it's a white lie because before they were metal shop workers for the F21 and Le Mans programmes, they were mechanics with the WRC team in the Celica and Corolla days!! Team manager is actually one of the logistics guys for the Le Mans team and the pit crew range from fabricators to HR and office staff!
If you know of companies offering similar incentives, please let me know!!!


http://www.autolifers.com/wp-content...T86-Cup-11.jpg






Anyway, have a read of the article and I'd love to hear your feedback on it. If you've any other questions on the day out, I've plenty of other pics from the day and cool info from teh head engineers from the programme.

http://www.autolifers.com/insight-be...-tmg-gt86-cup/

Ciaran

Awesome, thanks for putting this up!

Nice article. I wonder what the dyno plot for the remapped 86 look like. Any more details? What was their brake setup?

http://www.autolifers.com/wp-content...4_Race-4_6.jpg

Are those air intake vents where the fogs used to be?

Thank you for the great coverage. I am really disappointed that there are no teams in the US that are racing the FR-S professionally. The car is legal for classes in both the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge and the Pirelli World Challenge Series. The prevailing theory on this absence seems to be concerns about the reliability of the engine. I see that you mentioned that the engines are stock with just exhaust changes and a remapped tune. Have the TMG or other European teams had issues with the direct injector seals, heat or oil starvation that seem to plague some of the amateurs who track the FR-S or run time trials in the US ?

^^ me too, especially after the success Gazoo Racing had last year in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring.

Brake cooling :thumbsup:

Yes :)


TMG take in standard base model GT86 RC's from japan and strip everything out of them and build to V3 spec. Unfortunately everything take out is simply thrown away!!

You know that's a really good question that I never thought to ask!!

What I do know is the GT86 would probably be about the 3rd or 4th most popular car in the VLN, I think there's about 14 or so cars? (need to confirm) so drivers are happy with it going the distance on 4hr 6hr and 24hr races.
For a lot of teams this is their 2nd season with the car so it will be interesting to see how they get on at the 24 hour race in 2 weeks.
I'll ask one of the teams and see if they will let me know how the engine is coping or if any cup members had problems.

But from what I've seen so far, it's a more than capable car so I can't understand why they're running in the pirelli world challenge or conti sports car challenge. They're getting better lap times around the ring than MX5's with up to 50bhp more!

There aren't huge changes in braking, vented disks up front, standard size in rear, racing pads and braided lines.

I'm not sure are there any significant gains in power but they said the torque delivery is a mot better with the removal of that dip. Power stays around 200bhp on paper but I would imagine it's transferred much better.

I asked the head of the GT86 program about plans for upping the power (forced induction etc). He said Toyota as a manufacturer does not do FI so anything along those routes will be highly unlikely. Although whet I DO know is they are developing a more powerful race version of the GT86 for use in other race series! He wouldn't tell me exact figures but saint it would definitely be more powerful wink wink!

More powerful. I'm eager to hear what they may have in mind

Me too but they are keeping tight lipped about the new version of the race car for now! Would be hard to know what they have in mind but keep your eyes pealed next season ;)