First you hear it: a hard, metallic flat-four bark bouncing off the pit wall, nothing like the soft burble of a road car. Then the HKS GR86 time attack car rolls past the camera in black, purple and teal, a swan-neck wing standing higher than its roof. We were in the pit lane at Tsukuba Circuit, the 2 km course in Ibaraki that Japanese tuners have used as their measuring stick for decades.
GT86 or GR86? The footage says GR86
Our Instagram caption called this a GT86, and an older draft of this story turned it into the HKS TRB-03, the famous GT86 time attack car. Look closer and it isn't. The slim tail lights with their downturned inner ends, the short boot lid and the shape of the nose belong to the second-generation car, the Toyota GR86 (chassis ZN8, on sale from 2021), not the 2012-2021 GT86 (ZN6). The TRB-03 also wore a very different, much more extreme body. So this is a GR86 in HKS livery, with big HKS lettering down its doors.
What we filmed
The reel opens behind the Course 2000 gantry. The GR86 comes towards us down the pit lane, swings past the teal car we were standing next to, and squeezes by the pit wall, close enough to read the Yokohama tyre sticker on its rear bumper. A tow hook arrow is stuck on the bumper, the exhaust exits under the diffuser and the wing sits on tall swan-neck mounts. Then the camera swings round to follow it down the lane and onto the track.
The rest of the reel is the pit lane itself, which is a car show on its own. At 0:15 a white Porsche 911 race car with blue-lit headlights and a big rear wing waits at the light, with a black GR Supra (A90) parked beside it. Further down, crews in team jackets stand around a red car with a vented bonnet and a yellow time attack car being pushed out of its bay, under the Bridgestone and Yokohama banners and a grandstand full of people.
HKS and the GR86 at Tsukuba
HKS is the Japanese tuning company behind the turbo kits and exhausts on half the cars in this pit lane, and it uses Tsukuba as its laboratory. Since late 2021 it has run the "HKS Racing Performer GR86" time attack programme there with driver Nobuteru Taniguchi, a car HKS calls a running test bed for parts it sells.
The numbers are the story. On its first runs, with the 2.4-litre engine still naturally aspirated, the GR86 lapped Tsukuba in 1:02.805. A GTIII-RS bolt-on turbo arrived for the third attempt in February 2022 and took it under a minute (59.585). By the fifth attempt HKS quoted about 450 hp and a 57.102, and in March 2024 the car ran 55.978. By 2026 it had a 2.5-litre HKS Step 2 engine kit and a bigger GT4955 turbo, with 600 to 650 PS quoted on bio fuel, and Japanese magazine Response reported a 54.7 in January 2026.
We can't tell from 30 seconds of video whether the car we filmed is HKS's own test car or a customer car built by HKS, so we won't claim either. What we can say is that its livery, wing and noise match a car built for exactly this job.
Sources: HKS: GR86 Tsukuba time attack and Response (Japanese).
The takeaway
The GR86 is one of the cheapest rear-drive sports cars you can buy new, and HKS has shown it can lap Tsukuba faster than most supercars ever will. For another Tsukuba weapon, read about AutoBahn's carbon Toyota Soarer, and for the GR86 in drift trim, see the D1GP Ebisu story.
Video: One Breath Pictures.
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