Next-Generation Lexus RC F Inspired by GR GT3 Concept

Posted by Kevin on February 27th, 2022

The next-generation Lexus RC F will be directly inspired by the Toyota GR GT3 concept — here’s more from a Car & Driver interview with TRD president David Wilson:

The current RC road car was not developed with motorsports in mind—Wilson described the current RC F GT3 race car as an “afterthought.”

“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.”

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.

After Lexus announced its commitment to go full-electric by 2030, the future of its racing program was a huge question mark — it looks like the worry was unwarranted after all. Wilson even gives a timeline for the next-gen model, suggesting it would reach production “in a couple years”.

FutureLexus RC F: First GenerationRacing
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Faisal Sheikh

Faisal Sheikh

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GR GT3 would be more like a supercar built with a much higher budget so comparing it to an RCF GT3 is a little unfair comparison. Wilson mentions "afterthought" as a function of RCF re-purposed for GT3 racing. That might be true. However, it should not be sold short of what the car helped them achieve and its legacy is something that should be seen as a big success story, The brilliance of the underpinnings deserves some credit for the wins. It is heavier than the counterparts because it was designed to have a lot more structural rigidity "baked in" than the typical chassis setup and being non-carbon fiber, heavier weight is the penalty for it. No doubt there are several other factors that make a team win, but even Schumacher himself cannot win without a car with a great chassis/suspension/engine setup.
 
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CRSKTN

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The GT3 foundation will benefit multiple other models.

This further validates the idea of step down derivatives of some pinnacle vehicle, as opposed to step up variants of production vehicles.

Would be interesting to see a derived RCF before we see the LF…
 
DOC4Lex

DOC4Lex

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It’s a good plan however there is catch 22 situation the next Gen RCF will be pure EV. The V8 will be no more. Although the new platform will build from ground up.
 
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ssun30

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Yes, starting with motorsport in mind not only affects chassis design but also engine design. The 2UR with it's very peaky top end and weak low and mid range make it poorly suited to GT3 racing where top speed is very low. So they ended up reengineering a larger displacement variant that unfortunately didn't go into the production RC-F TE.

The GR Yaris has an engine designed exactly for rallying. We shall expect similar on GR GT3.
 
Faisal Sheikh

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ssun30 said:
Yes, starting with motorsport in mind not only affects chassis design but also engine design. The 2UR with it's very peaky top end and weak low and mid range make it poorly suited to GT3 racing where top speed is very low. So they ended up reengineering a larger displacement variant that unfortunately didn't go into the production RC-F TE.

The GR Yaris has an engine designed exactly for rallying. We shall expect similar on GR GT3.
Click to expand...

It is because of racing regulations of air restrictors limiting rpms and horsepower to about 500 PS in order to put limits on power. With the air restrictors limiting rpms, the 5.0 Liter 2UR would not make anywhere near the required 500 PS. Having more displacement by boring it out sacrifices high rpms, but allows for peak power to come earlier at low rpms to get around the issue of high rpms being limited by the air restrictors. In the videos, you will see the GT3 does not rev up much. GR did that with the LFA as well where the Code X V10 was bored out from 4.8 Liter to 5.3 Liters.
 
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