Subaru explains dismal end to SUPER GT title defence

Iguchi and Yamauchi went into last weekend's Motegi finale hoping to become the first ever crew to score back-to-back GT300 titles, but ended up 20th at the end of a race for forget for the R&D Sport-run team.

The weekend began badly when Yamauchi crashed in qualifying, leaving he and Iguchi starting 16th and facing an uphill battle to overturn the 2.5 point lead held by Kondo Racing pair Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Kiyoto Fujinami.

Iguchi then spent the early laps going backwards, slipping outside the top 20, and after taking over the BRZ at the pitstop phase Yamauchi was on course for 13th before running out of fuel in the closing stages.

Subaru general manager Masahiro Ozawa explained that Iguchi was finally able to find a way to compensate for the faulty anti-lag system as he initially struggled with a significant loss of power.

"We were having trouble with the anti-lag system, and the engine wasn’t producing power properly," Ozawa told Motorsport.com's Japanese edition.

"The anti-lag was cutting in and out, and a car with a two-litre turbo engine like ours becomes very peaky with no anti-lag. It becomes difficult to get any traction. But the driver [Iguchi] handled it very well.

"The top speed was down by about 8km/h, so I was thinking we’d have to pit [to solve the issue], but Iguchi did a lot of fiddling with the settings, and found a way to drive normally even with the anti-lag system disabled.

"Yamauchi was able to set laptimes in the 1m50s even without the anti-lag, so that was very helpful."

 

After taking a Balance of Performance hit in the wake of its dominant 2021 campaign, Subaru concluded the 2022 season with four out of eight pole positions, taking a single victory at Fuji and two other podium finishes.

However, the team failed to be as consistent as the title-winning Kondo squad, notably suffering a starter issue in the opening race at Okayama and turbo trouble in qualifying for Round 3 at Suzuka, while another chance of a strong result at Sugo was also lost due to poor strategy in the rain.

Ozawa says that Subaru's goal for next year will be to improve on the reliability and operational side and score points in all eight races.

"It was the same this year, but next year we are aiming to have a strong team," he said. "The target is to score points in every race. To do that we have to increase the strength of the car.

"Our speed is in a good place, so if we can round off the sharp edges, rather than simply aiming to be even faster, I think we can achieve our goal of scoring points in all races next year."