Subaru Unfazed By BRZ’s Lowly Position in Okayama Test

Subaru has stated it is relaxed about its lowly position on the timesheets in last week’s official Okayama SUPER GT test with its revamped BRZ as it focused on long runs.

The two-day test marked the first official outing for the R&D Sport-run No. 61 car equipped with its new EG33-derived six-cylinder engine, which was revealed as the successor to the long-serving EJ20 during the Tokyo Auto Salon in January.

But the best time recorded by the Subaru, a 1:26.482 set by Takuto Iguchi in the opening session on Friday, put the car only 23rd of the 28 GT300 cars present and around 1.5 seconds behind the pace-setting LM Corsa Lexus LC500h GT.

Gneral manager Masahiro Ozawa said he expected that to be the case considering Subaru’s program, which mostly comprised preparations for the opening round of the season at the same venue next month instead of new-tire runs.

“The focus this time was basically on replicating a race situation and working out what to do with the tires over a long run,” Ozawa told Sportscar365. “We didn’t do any real running on new tires, so I knew we would end up quite low down the order.

“In the tests we did before coming here, we started with functionality checks, and then we focused on tire selection, and now we’ve finally been able to see how the car behaves over a long run, and find the direction to complete the race properly.

“From that point of view, it was an extremely good test.”

Prior to the official Okayama test, Subaru conducted a shakedown with the revised BRZ at Fuji Speedway in late February, and then took part in the ‘special sports driving’ sessions at Okayama in which 13 GT300 runners participated.

Subaru recorded a best time of 1:25.292 on Wednesday, a time that would have been good enough for fourth overall had it been replicated in the official test.

Asked how confident he felt about a strong performance for Iguchi and co-driver Hideki Yamauchi when the season kicks off, Ozawa admitted to some uneasiness about potential issues that may have yet to reveal themselves.

“Of course bringing in something completely new, we’ve had a few problems and there are some things we weren’t able yet to fix completely,” he said.

“Doing a race simulation this time allowed us to learn a lot of small things, for example certain switch settings being strange. And it’s possible that there might be other things like that, which is a worry, but more or less I think we could check everything.

“I am a still a little anxious for the season opener, and I wouldn’t say I feel confident. But I think it will be a case of just getting through the first one or two races and working out what we still need to do. There is still a long way to go.

“Naturally, the objective is to be fighting at the front from the opening race, and if you ask me if I am confident of doing that, I would say right now I am not.”

However, Ozawa expressed confidence that the reliability of the new horizontally-opposed EJ33 engine, with its two extra cylinders, should be a step forward from the EJ20, which suffered numerous problems in recent seasons.

“We did around ten tests with the engine installed in the previous spec [mule] car, and we did a lot of running during those,” said Ozawa.

“I don’t think the reliability is a problem. But when it comes to normal GT3 cars [making their debuts], we have run way less than they would have done, maybe 10 or 20 times less. From that perspective, the distance we have done isn’t enough yet.”