Here's what it looks like when Acura turns Business Insider's Car of the Year into a race car

The Acura NSX was Business Insider's 2016 Car of the Year. This jaw-droppingly beautiful, high-tech reboot of Acura's cult classic landed at a time when supercars were thick on the ground. In fact, the NSX was launched at roughly the same time Ford debuted its 24 Hours of Le Mans-conquering GT.

Fast cars want to test themselves against other fast cars, and in a few weeks, the race-car version of the NSX will make its competitive debut at the Rolex 24 in Daytona, FL, in the GT3 class.

To make this possible, Acura Motorsports had to make some serious modifications to the NSX, in order to satisfy the racing rules. The GT3 racer loses the road car's innovative hybrid-electric drive train, with its three electric motors, and goes with just a 3.5-liter turbocharged V6, mounted between the driver and the back wheels. The gearbox drops from nine gears to six. And the all-wheel-drive system goes - the NSX GT3 is rear-wheel-drive.

Michael Shank Racing and RealTime Racing will bring four NSX GT3s to the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship at Daytona International Speedway on Jan. 28-29, where they will mix in with exotic prototype cars, as well as Corvettes, Ferraris, and Ford GTs.

Acura brought its new GT3 race car to the 2017 Detroit Auto Show, and we checked it out: