In its glory days, Subaru bagged World Rally Championships in '95, '96, and '97 and eventually held eight Rally America titles. More recently, though, Subaru's motorsports division—led by Toshiya Azuma, from Subaru Tecnica International—has focused on endurance road racing, specifically the 24 Hours Nürburgring. The all-wheel-drive WRX STI won the 'Ring's SP3T class in both 2011 and 2012 and last year was runner-up to an Audi TT.
Subaru will challenge the 'Ring again this year in a new STI racer that is allegedly more closely related to the new street car, although it initially tipped the scales at only 2690 pounds and produced 340 horsepower. At the track, in fact, scrutineers will subject the car to a chassis dyno to ensure it makes no more than 340 horses—them's the rules. "Which is fine with us," says Azuma, "because reliability is what's key." The car sports a center-mounted manual shifter for its sequential gearbox and makes use of an automatic rev-matching system. Some thought was given to deploying that system on the street-going STI, but the engineers were afraid that hardcore Subaristas would spit nails.
Subaru's budget for this undertaking is so slim that Azuma could afford only one race car—built in Japan, not at David Richard's Prodrive in England. If one of the four drivers somehow totals this lone example—say, during the four-hour test prior to the Nürburgring enduro—well, Azuma drags a finger across his throat and mutters, "Season end."
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Azuma aches to return to the WRC, "but right now," he observes, "we have no car small enough. The WRC cars must be the size of VW Polos and Ford Fiestas. Our BRZ would be a good fit, but it does not have all-wheel drive, and the FIA won't let us add it." Which sounds like an argument for a street-going Symmetrical AWD BRZ. It's telling that one of Azuma's development drivers is ex-rally maestro Tommi Mäkinen.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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