The Lexus RC-F is a car that was designed to take on the M3/RS4/C63 head to head, but unfortunately the view of most motoring experts is that it’s a little too heavy and a little bit weak to go head-to-head with the German trio. But the Japanese, being Japanese, got to work on producing a racecar in the form of the RC-F GT3, which we reported a couple of months ago. The car is around 600 kilograms lighter than it’s road-going counterpart, and produces about 540 hp. It’s been seeing some decent results on it’s home turf.
But the Japanese decided that it’s time to head for the big leagues. The world wasn’t going to respect the RC-F GT3 if it wasn’t competing in an international setting, and what better place to throw the gauntlet than the Nurburgring itself. Entering the 4th round of the VLN, it was placed in the newly-formed SPX class, owing to it’s lack of homologation at time of entry. While the class was small (basically 3 cars including the pair of RC-F GT3s), the cars performed admirably.
It’s only rival in class was the newly developed Mercedes-AMG GT3, which finished 4 laps behind the Japanese duo. The RC-F GT3s managed to clinch 10th and 11th place overall, smack bang in the middle of a field of Porsche 911s and barely a lap off the lead car (over 8 minutes behind, but still on the same lap). It pays to remember that there are over 100 cars running the ‘Ring during the VLN race, and finishing the race on this treacherous circuit is difficult enough, let alone navigating traffic and taking a win.
Where the RC-F GT3 will head to next is uncertain. but the results of the VLN has shown promise in this new contender for the GT3 class. This will definitely have piqued the curiosity of other manufacturers, and it will be interesting to see how the RC-F GT3 functions on shorter race durations.
