In the west racing cars are serious business and carry serious sponsors. Japan is different. In the land of the raising sun Video Games and Anime are serious business. That's why they're considered serious sponsors and it's not too unlikely to see some cute smiling faces appear on the bonnet of a sport car during official races.

Today, as part of the winter edition of the Wonder Festival at the Makuhari Messe Convention Center in Tokyo (the same place where the Tokyo Game Show is held) the GSR & Studie with TEAM UKYO racing team showcased its two new racing cars for the 2012 Super GT season. 

Both cars have a common theme: the vocaloid and video game diva Hatsune Miku.

The team isn't new to this kind of imagery. Its car that took part in the 2011 season of the Super GT and actually took the GT300 class championship home was already themed after Miku. After all "GSR" stands for Good Smile Racing Team, owned by Good Smile Company, a well known Japanese manufacturer of anime and game figures, including the popular Nendroid and Figma lines.

The BMW Z4 GT3 that won last year has been repainted with a livery showing Hatsune Miku in a new Race Queen look illustrated by GAN (that you can see in the gallery below) and renamed "GSR Hatsune Miku BMW", taking the number 0 reserved to the GT300 class champion.

The second Z4 GT3, entirely new, is dedicated to the upcoming 3DS game Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project Mirai and has been named "GSR ProjectMirai BMW" taking up the number 4 that used to belong to the first car.

You can check out both cars in the pictures below (courtesy of the Japanese motorsport website AutoSport Web). If you want to (virtually) drive them, I bet it won't take long for someone to reproduce the new liveries in Forza Motorsport 4.