Gallery: Japan’s Super GT series

What's that embarrassingly worn-out cliché about waiting for a bus and so forth? After an agonisingly long tease, not only has the Subaru BRZ road car finally landed, so has a weightlifting, gym-honed sibling. That shiny blue automotive hammer you see above is a BRZ in full Super GT uniform. Why does this excite us? Because Japanese Super GT is the fastest race series in the world for road-going cars.

How fast is fast? Put it this way, Maserati tried to enter its MC12 racing car a few years back into Japan's Super GT500 but it was deemed too slow (by almost a second a lap, entirely down to aerodynamics in corners).

Subaru's BRZ will head for the slightly less mental GT300 class - the B league of Super GT. Cars are limited by air restrictors to 300bhp (GT500s all have 500bhp hand-built 3.4 litre V8s) and Subaru must keep the car as close to its road-going DNA as possible.