Maserati significantly overhauled its MC20 to create a new race car, called the GT2.
At its heart, we’re still looking at the Italian brand’s halo sports car here. To create the GT2, though, the company went through and changed up everything to make it a bona fide racer, which it finally revealed Friday.
According to Maserati, the GT2 draws on the “living legacy” of the old MC12, derived from the Ferrari Enzo. To transform it into a racer, this car gets a massive splitter, intakes, louvres and anything else you can imagine to give it more aerodynamic downforce — I’m sure you spotted the gigantic wing on the back. Also at the rear end, the Maserati GT2 gets a nice, beefy rear diffuser to improve its on-track performance.
Things hardly stop there, of course. You still get a double-wishbone suspension setup at both ends, but the Maserati team changed things up with new shocks, springs, anti-roll bars and geometry. Powering the Maserati GT2 is the same “Nettuno” twin-turbocharged V6 as the standard car, putting out 621 horsepower (coincidentally, exactly the same amount as the MC12’s V12 engine) and 538 lb-ft of torque.
Keeping with the close-to-production vibe is a set of ventilated steel brake rotors, rather than carbon ceramic discs, with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston calipers in the rear.
Instead of the standard car’s 8-speed automatic, though, the GT2 gets a 6-speed sequential manual transmission. To keep weight down, the Maserati GT2 uses a carbon fiber chassis like the standard model, a polycarbonate windshield and side windows and, in racing car style, ditches most of the interior.
The Maserati GT2 gets a full set of racing switch gear, as you’d expect, both on the steering wheel and the center control stack. The GT2 fits a set of race-spec seats and uses an instrument cluster display. That said, you lose most of the creature comforts (except air conditioning) that make the normal MC20 a luxury car, as well as a seriously quick sports car.
As for its actual track debut, you’ll see the Maserati GT2 in the final stages of the 2023 Fanatec GT European Series. There, it will run in the hands of pro racing teams, and it’s set to participate in the entire 2024 GT season.