The Pirelli World Challenge series is one of a few professional-level racing series that allows manufacturers to push the limits of what is possible. Acura and the RealTime Racing team has teamed up with their 4-door luxury family sedan based on the TLX platform for the challenge.
The base of any GT car is a chassis, usually very similar to the road-going version. In this case, the car starts with the same high-strength steel uni-body as the production car. The use of high-strength steel requires less steel and therefore, less weight. And as we all know, less weight means more speed. A rollcage is added for safety as well as increased chassis stiffness to improve the handling of the car. The road car’s body is replaced with HPD-designed lightweight carbon-fiber bodywork to further reduce the overall weight. A front splitter and rear wing are also added to the car to produce downforce.
The engine in the race car is a twin-turbocharged version of the 3.5-liter V6 that will power the road car. The block, crank and heads are shared with the road car. Various internal components are added to bring the performance of the engine up to the levels of power needed to compete in the stacked category.
The engine will feed an Xtrac gearbox, as well as Xtrac front and rear differentials – none of these components are shared with the street car. Per the rulebook, cars are only allowed to have six forward gears and active differentials are not allowed. This makes the 8-speed automatic transmission that will be in the street car, as well as the SH-AWD, illegal to run in the series, thus the reason for sourcing the Xtrac driveline.
The racecar’s suspension will carry over zero parts from the production car. RealTime Racing has had a tremendous amount of success in the Touring Car categories, which tend to be much closer to stock. Generally, the GT class cars are much further from stock, and more freedom is permitted when designing and building the cars. The TLX-GT car will employ an HPD-designed suspension, including fully adjustable coil-over shocks, anti-roll bars, camber and a myriad of other items.
