Supra GT

‘When we applied the Supra’s shape to the 2020 regulations we found that there was a really big drop off in performance’

It has taken almost a decade of negotiation but in October and November the GT500 class of Super GT and the German DTM will come together for a pair of challenge events. The first event will be held in Germany and will see a single racecar each from Lexus, Honda and Nissan take on the entire DTM field, then a few weeks later at Fuji Speedway the entire DTM field and the entire GT500 grid will come together for a two-race, six-manufacturer shootout.

This will be the final step towards the creation of the long promised Class 1 regulations which Super GT will, mostly, adopt for 2020, and which DTM has already implemented. To coincide with the introduction of the new regulations Toyota has decided that its Lexus brand will withdraw from GT500 and that it will now be represented by the new Toyota Supra model. The decision was long rumoured in Super GT circles, but was officially confirmed at the Tokyo Auto Salon in early 2019, where a GT500 specification Toyota Supra was revealed, alongside one of the previous Supras raced in Super GT in the mid 2000s.

Shape shifter

‘When it was decided that we would use the Supra we took a look at the production car and noticed of course that the Supra is quite a small car and the GT500 cars are quite big,’Yoji Nagai, general manager, TRD Motor Sports Development Department,