Exploring Japan's Super GT LC

zeusus

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https://www.topgear.com/car-news/big-reads/exploring-japans-super-gt-series-lexus-lc

The KeePer TOM’S LC is Manga made real, swollen with vented carbon arches, flattened to the floor, shaded by its own enormous wings. And it looks like it’s going to bite someone’s head off.

You can see the resemblance, that this is an LC, but once you dig a little deeper, you find that the Super GT cars are familiar skins draped over a skeleton of hardcore motorsport. The tub is carbon, the panels are carbon, the wings are carbon.

The motor is the class-standard 2.0-litre four-cylinder with a Garrett blower, supposedly producing around 550bhp – though we later find out it’s probably nearer to 680. And although it’s a shame it’s not a V8, the raw and guttural edge to the noise makes up for the lack of cylinders. There’s a six-speed sequential paddle shift, carbon brakes, and the whole thing weighs in at just over a tonne. Getting on for half the weight of the road car.

It’s like Le Mans condensed into a violently short track, each 500-mile race a battle royale of overtaking, tactics and endurance, pitched against a background of loads of different cars: there are GT-Rs and NSXs, Audi R8s and Lamborghini Huracáns, AMG GT Rs and a Bentley Continental. There’s even a GT3-spec Toyota Prius. Really.

Exciting doesn’t quite cover it, and although it also means that it can be quite confusing – especially with Japanese-only commentary – you get more overtaking in the first 10 minutes of racing than you do in an entire season of Formula One. Jenson Button decamped here after emerging from F1 to race the Raybrig NSX-GT for Team Kunimitsu, and you can see why – this is undoubtedly a racer’s series.