<LI class="a-publish-date first-child">Sunday, 1 February 2009 <LI class=a-author>Sam Collins <LI class=a-comments>2 Comments

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Futuristic Toyota sports prototypes will go head to head with open wheelers next year

The newly founded Japanese Motorsport Industry Association (JMIA) has launched F20, a new series designed to "remember the pleasure to make a racecar” in the words of President Hayashi of Dome. All cars will share an identical monocoque, and will have to comply with overall length, width and height restrictions as well as all cars using the same tyre size. Quite brilliantly there is no restriction on engine capacity whatsoever, the only rule being that all cars must run a 20mm restrictor.

Dome's bubble canopy racer

Masao Ono's Tokyo R&D have gone for a open wheel design

Mooncraft have gone the maddest of all

The proposed designs are wild and look like extras from the new Speed Racer movie.




The Spec chassis

What sort of engines will they be running?

Quote from duke_toaster :

What sort of engines will they be running?

any
if you think that the 20mm intake restrictor can support, you can use a F1 engine

now this looks promising

That's an pretty interesting idea and I hope they will succeed

Its high time we had another 'free-for-all' series, it'll be great to see the variety, v8s, v10s, v6s, maybe v12s, brilliant.

Nice concept to lure in lots of engine manufacturers but let me guess, it can't be seen on TV anywhere but Japan.

Quote from Blackout :

Nice concept to lure in lots of engine manufacturers but let me guess, it can't be seen on TV anywhere but Japan.

teh internetz isn't just for pornz

Quote from BenjiMC :

teh internetz isn't just for pornz

really ?

this thing does look promising, hopefully we can see it on internet.

I don't care about the cars, post more pictures of those women.

Quote from Lateralus :

I don't care about the cars, post more pictures of those women.

Even though I would normally agree, how about pictures of the women beside the cars?

This looks very interesting indeed. I'm keeping MY eyes open for this.

Wow... now that indeed sounds interesting. Hope it will get more popular beyond Japan. Can't wait to see it online .

:wtf2: is that the new batmobile?

if they make the tyres a bit wider and the restrictor a bit less... restrictive it might become interesting

Looks cool actually.

What sort of power outputs should we expect from a 20mm restrictor? Do we know if turbo or supercharging is allowed? If memory serves, FSAE cars have a small restrictor (19mm to 25mm, according to various google results) but can get around this to some extend with a turbo. If power figures are in the MRT5 zone, then it's a shame the cars won't have the performance to match the looks.

I think the engine performance is going to be a bit higher than the MRT!

Theoretically you could run any engine, so long as it could cope with a restrictor.

Well the MRT9 makes 100hp, a fair bit more than our beloved MRT5, but I thought by limiting the air input, you're essentially limiting the power? Of course I'm no mechanic and don't know enough about that side of engines, hence the question.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Well the MRT9 makes 100hp, a fair bit more than our beloved MRT5, but I thought by limiting the air input, you're essentially limiting the power? Of course I'm no mechanic and don't know enough about that side of engines, hence the question.

Of course power will be a bit restricted, but from what I've heard you can use just about any engine you want, so budget permitting, you could use an F1 engine, although thats a bit unrealistic I guess, but perhps we will be seeing FNippon engines, which are 3 litre Honda and Toyota v8s.

One engine is a one litre unit, presumably turbo'd. If the engine rules are "any engine that can breathe through a 20mm restrictor", that would presumably allow turbocharging. Or superchargers, which aren't that popular these days.