Subaru Returns To Nurburgring 24-Hour With Old WRX Racer

Subaru Tecnica International, more commonly known as STI, will participate in the 50th Nurburgring 24-Hour Race this weekend.

This will be Scooby’s 15th Nurburgring 24-Hour since its first entry in 2008. Subaru famously dropped out of the World Rally Championship at the end of 2008 and put all of its focus on endurance racing and the Isle of Man TT.

It hasn’t competed in the Nurburgring 24-Hour for the past three years, most likely due to the pandemic. The race was postponed in 2020, though it was one of the first motorsport events to allow spectators back in.

Now that things are normal, Subaru is back, hoping to claim its seventh win in the SP3T class. This news comes a few months after Subaru unveiled an all-electric racer meant to claim the fastest time ever around the Nürburgring.

Subaru is still keeping its purse strings tight because the race car is based on the previous-generation WRX and not the all-new model. It should help Subaru claim back some of its racing kudos, even though it’s essentially the same car Subaru took to victory in the 2018 Nurburgring 24-Hour.

SP3T is for cars with turbocharged engines of up to 2.0 liters in displacement, and the new Subaru WRX has a 2.4-liter turbocharged boxer engine bolted under the hood. Still, Subaru knows the power of racing as a marketing tool too well, and a victory for the old WRX is a win for the entire brand. Using a WRX also makes more sense considering the STI derivative is dead.

Carlo van Dam (Netherlands), Tim Schrick (Germany), Marcel Lasee (Germany), and Kota Sasaki (Japan), will be driving for the team.

The Nurburgring is widely regarded as the most brutal track on earth. A single lap is 15.6 miles long and has nearly 1,000 feet of elevation changes. The Nürburgring also presents an exciting challenge when it comes to weather. It could be shining brightly at one end and bucketing down at the other.

Subaru changed the vehicle to give it a better shot against the more modern competition. Even though it’s a few years old, it still comes with impressive figures and features. The 1,994 cc turbocharged engine has been tweaked to produce 335 horsepower and 340 lb-ft of torque. The power is sent to Subaru’s famous Symmetrical AWD system via a six-speed sequential gearbox, and the vehicle weighs just 2,866 pounds.

It comes with larger tires and wheels for additional grip, a larger fuel tank to give the car a longer running distance, a more advanced telemetry system that can send more information back to the pits, a collision-avoidance warning system, and electric power steering to reduce the burden on the drivers. Hopefully, it all translates to a win.