SGT official website reports Hiroto Kaneso (Team apr) interview.
https://supergt.net/news/single/20221
In the past, the only racing cars that apr has made have been midship layout cars, but due to the change in regulations, we made the FR Prius GT300 and introduced it to the race last year. Last year we started developing a new 2UR-G, a large V8 engine with a displacement of 5.4 liters. The first year, we didn't have any problems, but the car wasn't fast enough. The main reason for this was that we didn't have a good understanding of FR. Other teams may have taken FR for granted, but the apr team had always been biased towards it.
After I started developing the FR Prius GT300, I spent the first year and a half learning the basics of what FR was all about. Of course, TRD and the tire manufacturers were very supportive, and we did a lot of things with them. Over the course of the off-season, we have become much more competitive. In the past two races we haven't been able to use it to our advantage, but this time we were able to set up the machine in a good way and they were able to provide us with tyres to match, which led to today's qualifying results. I've never been able to understand FR before, but today's pole position has made me like FR a little bit more. But it's been a really long time so far.
However, as for the race, I think we'll have to reach a level where we can only hope to make it to the podium. Our Prius is a JAF-GT300 car, and according to the regulations, the refueling time for JAF-GT300 cars must be very long. However, I understand that one of the things that makes SGT so interesting is that we try to keep the rules in check so that we don't have to compete with the dominated cars.
I race because I believe that what we are trying to do is to create a motorsports culture. In this context, there is also the culture of car making, and I think it is absolutely important to have a flow of feedback from the technology developed in motorsports to the production cars. Our car is currently the only hybrid car in SGT, and its hybrid technology has been developed by the automaker Toyota Motor Corporation. In other words, our machines will be passed on to future hybrid technology.
This is not to say that the FIA GT3 is bad. However, the culture of GT3, where the objective is to race with already built cars, and JAF-GT300, where we race with our own cars through trial and error, are completely different. I was trained by Haruo Tsuchiya (founder of Tsuchiya Engineering) and others who poured their heart and soul into racing with their own cars, so I would like to carry on the culture of building racing cars and nurture it.