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Motorsport
Motorsport
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Jamie Klein

Team Mach to continue in SUPER GT with replacement 86 MC

The #5 Mother Chassis machine shared by Reiji Hiraki and rookie Yusuke Tomibayashi was terminally damaged in the season finale when Tomibayashi was rear-ended along the start/finish straight by the apr Toyota Prius of Yuhki Nakayama during a safety car period.

Although Tomibayashi was unharmed, subsequent inspection of the car's standard Dome tub indicated that it was unrepairable, throwing the future of Team Mach - which has run the 86 MC since 2015 - into doubt.

However, on Christmas Day (Sunday), the squad announced that it will run the 86 MC owned by Inging, which was campaigned by Arnage Racing campaigned last year, for next season.

 

The news effectively ensures that the Mother Chassis concept will live on for another year despite doubts over the feasibility of keeping the standard GTA engine - an unbranded Nissan V8 - in service after going out of production.

Tomibayashi, who scored a first SUPER GT podium at Suzuka in May, will stay for a second season at Team Mach alongside a new teammate in the form of 2016 GT300 champion Takamitsu Matsui.

Matsui makes the move across from Tsuchiya Engineering after a difficult 2022 season sharing the team's hand-crafted GR Supra GT300 with rookie Seita Nonaka that yielded just a single point.

Team patron Takeshi Tsuchiya revealed that he had made the offer of loaning out his team's old 86 MC, which was last raced in 2019, to Team Mach boss Tetsuji Tamanaka, and that Matsui's services would be included as part of such a deal.

 

Although Tamanaka declined in favour of doing a deal with Inging, an agreement was still reached for Matsui to join Team Mach.

Meanwhile, Arnage Racing has confirmed that it intends to keep racing in 2023 with a new car after the end of its lease agreement with Inging.

The squad previously ran a Mercedes-AMG GT3, but this was transferred to sister team R'Qs Motor Sports for 2022 after the previous R'Qs Mercedes was terminally damaged in a crash at Autopolis in 2021.

It remains to be seen what type of car Arnage will elect to run next season, but one option would be to switch to the new-generation Toyota GR86 GT300 car that made its debut this year.

Hiroto Kaneso, the boss of the apr firm that constructed the three GR86s seen on the 2022 grid, revealed to Motorsport.com earlier this year that another constructor was hoping to introduce its own version of the car for 2023.

Additional reporting by Kenichiro Ebii

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