Last year, Max Verstappen sold his FK8 CTR for charity. Wings of Life, a not-for-profit spinal cord research foundation with the single mission to find the cure for spinal cord injury, received all the proceeds. Not even a year later, the reigning world champion has been reunited with the Civic Type R in Hungary for a cutesy promo of the FL5 CTR at the Euro-Ring.
Opened in 2004, this racetrack is a well-equipped complex located a little over 50 kilometers from Budapest, alongside the M5 motorway near Örkeny. Save for the Hungaroring, where the Hungarian Grand Prix is held since 1986, the Japanese automaker couldn’t have picked a better Hungarian circuit.
After a few laps behind the wheel of the most powerful series-production hatchback from Honda, the Dutch racing driver goes “Type R. Just wow.”
From the standpoint of a road-legal car with front-wheel drive, it most certainly is wow. But from a racing driver’s viewpoint, wow is a little bit of a stretch considering the RB18 that Max and Sergio Perez use during race weekends to show Ferrari and Mercedes who has the superior machinery.
Revealed in July 2020, the FL5 went on sale in Japan earlier this month. Prospective customers from the Land of the Rising Sun will have to wait more than six months to take delivery of the front-drive hot hatchback that’s manufactured at the Yorii assembly plant in the Saitama Prefecture. Similar to the FK8, the beating heart of the Civic Type R is a 2.0-liter turbo mill.
The four-cylinder lump is tuned to make 330 metric horsepower in Japan and Europe, whereas American customers will have to make do with 315 mechanical horsepower. Torque is estimated at 420 Nm (310 pound-foot) between 2,600 and 4,000 revolutions per minute, with everything channeled to the front wheels by a close-ratio manual tranny and a helical-type LSD.
Equipped from the factory with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber shoes, the FL5 CTR is available in five colors: the Type R-exclusive Championship White, along with Rallye Red, Boost Blue, Crystal Black, and Sonic Gray Pearl.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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