A second GTA-GT300 specification Toyota GR Supra will race in the 2021 Autobacs Super GT Series, as LM Corsa announced today that they will be racing the GR Supra GT300 in the upcoming season.
LM Corsa will field the #60 Syntium LMCorsa GR Supra GT for veteran ace driver Hiroki Yoshimoto, and second-year teammate Shunsuke Kohno, as confirmed in a press release from the team’s parent company, Osaka Toyopet Group (OTG). Along with confirmation that 2002 GT500 Drivers’ Champion Akira Iida will return as Team Director, LM Corsa also announced that they would switch to Dunlop (Sumitomo Rubber) tyres for the upcoming season.
This is the exact same GR Supra GT300 that debuted in 2020 at the hands of fellow Toyota dealership-owned squad Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave, which won its debut race at Fuji Speedway last July and bookended the season with a second win at Fuji in the season finale. Developed in collaboration with Toyota Customization & Development (TCD) and fellow GT300 mainstays apr Racing, the GR Supra GT300 is built on the mainframe bulkhead of the road-going fifth-generation Toyota GR Supra, as prescribed in the GTA-GT300 (formerly JAF-GT300) technical regulations. The car is powered by a familiar engine to LM Corsa, the 5.4-litre, naturally-aspirated Toyota 2UR-GSE V8 engine.
Since 2015, LM Corsa were the first team to field the Lexus RC F GT3 in a full-season sports car racing championship, enduring two difficult seasons with the pre-homologation RC F GT3 “Concept” before the car received GT3 homologation in 2017.
A second LM Corsa entry, operated in conjunction with INGING Motorsport from 2017-2018, gave the RC F GT3 its first four victories in Japan. When that second team, now known as K-Tunes Racing, parted ways with LM Corsa in 2019, their sole remaining entry – the number 60 team – still hadn’t won a race with the RC F. That changed in September 2019, though, when Yoshimoto and future GT500 star Ritomo Miyata won the sixth round of the championship at Autopolis International Racing Course. Yoshimoto and Miyata followed that up by sweeping both races of the GT300 Sprint Cup, held during the weekend of the one-off Super GT x DTM Dream Race at Fuji.
Following a difficult 2020 season and the announcement that Lexus will discontinue its customer GT3 racing programmes in Europe, OTG and LM Corsa will go in a different direction for 2021 with the new GR Supra.
At the same time, LM Corsa will switch tyre suppliers for the number 60 car for the fourth straight season: Yokohama was their tyre supplier through 2018. In 2019, the team switched to Dunlop and enjoyed a breakout season. In 2020, Michelin returned as a GT300 tyre supplier full-time, but LM Corsa struggled for most of the season, recording only a best finish of 9th at the season finale in Fuji. Therefore, the team will switch back to Dunlop for 2021, who supplied K-Tunes Racing, R&D Sport’s Subaru factory entry, and the number 11 Gainer Nissan GT-R GT3 in 2020.
Yoshimoto has driven for LM Corsa since their inception in 2014, and with more than 100 Super GT races under his belt and seven career victories, including three in the prestigious Suzuka 1000km – the veteran driver and lead singer of the band “doa” will once again lead the team’s efforts.
Shunsuke Kohno made his Super GT debut in 2020, while also driving in the Super Formula Lights Championship with RS Fine, the team operated by his father, Takao Kohno, the two-time, champion Chief Engineer of Goodsmile Racing & Team UKYO. The younger Kohno helped clinch the ST-1 Championship for Rookie Racing in Super Taikyu this season and had a test in a Super Formula car at Fuji this off-season.
