The latest news to come out of Toyota’s BTCC camp is that Dynojet Race Team’s Avensis racer will have under its hood a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-banger adapted from one of the Japanese firm’s road-going range. The engine is currently under Toyota GB-funded development at the Northamptonshire laboratories of engineering consultancy X CTech. It will feature a turbocharger as well as a number of internal revisions, which will all help boost output from around 140bhp in road specification to 300bhp or more.
X CTech said it believes the racing car powerplant will be one of the lightest and most powerful engines on the grid of the British Touring Car Championship.
“The Avensis has been designed to the ‘Next Generation Touring Car’ rules, which means we could have opted for the stock TOCA engine, however we were enormously impressed by the plans put forward by X CTech R and felt that this was the right way for us to go, not least because it means our Avensis will be 100 per cent Toyota,” said Dynojet Race Team chief Frank Wrathall Snr.
The Dynojet Race Team’s Avensis BTCC car will be raced this season by Frank Wrathall Jnr. The opening rounds of the British Touring Car Championship are scheduled for 3 April at Brands Hatch, Kent.