The Honda Civic Sort R-GT Idea has been unveiled on the 2023 Tokyo Auto Salon, forward of a racing debut in 2024.
Designed for the Tremendous GT championship’s GT500 class, the Honda Civic Sort R-GT Idea will quickly be taking to Japan’s premier race circuits.
Tremendous GT is the largest home motorsport system in Japan and sees Honda, Toyota, and Nissan all go toe-to-toe for outright glory. At the moment, Toyota and Nissan area high-performance prototypes primarily based on the Supra and Z respectively, whereas Honda’s drivers make use of an NSX-based machine.
Nonetheless, with the roadgoing NSX nearing the tip of manufacturing, Honda requires a brand new racing mannequin for 2024. That, is the place the Honda Civic Sort R-GT Idea is available in.
The automotive is more likely to endure some revisions earlier than it’s formally homologated for the GT500 ruleset. Although, visually at the very least, we will count on the racecar to look similar to the idea proven right here.
Honda Civic Sort R-GT Idea Technical Information
From an out of doors perspective, the transition from NSX to Civic looks like fairly a big one for any racing staff to undertake. Nonetheless, in a dialog with Motorsport.com, Honda Racing president Koji Watanabe appeared unconcerned.
“I feel at this level, the [downforce] degree will not be too totally different from the NSX-GT,” he mentioned. “We’re at a degree the place there are usually not many main damaging elements.”
On the finish of the day, past its exterior styling, there’s finally little or no that this racecar and its roadgoing namesake will share in frequent. For a begin, whereas the common FL5 Honda Civic Sort R is entrance wheel drive, this GT500 racer will ship its energy to the rear. Count on its engine to be bespoke too. Honda at the moment makes use of the HR-420E unit in its NSX racer, which is a 2.0-litre turbocharged inline-four able to 550PS! So, when bolted right into a carbon monocoque chassis weighing simply 1020kg, this stuff *actually* shift.
We’ll have to attend till 2024 to see if the Civic is able to taking over the Supra and the Z, however for now, Tokyo Auto Salon’s panel of judges at the very least appear very impressed by it. The Civic Sort R-GT received the Grand Prize within the present’s idea automotive class, so who is aware of, maybe that’s a great omen for issues to return…
