Toyota to enter V8 Supercars in 2026 with GR Supra

09/17/2024 03:00 PM

Toyota will compete in the Supercars Championship – the top category of Australian touring-car racing dominated by Ford and General Motors-Holden – from 2026, the company announced today.

The Japanese car giant will partner with Walkinshaw Andretti United – formerly the factory-backed HoldenRacing Team before a switch to Ford in 2023 – to develop the GR Supra for Supercars’ latest Gen3 regulations.

The road car’s BMW-sourced 3.0-litre turbocharged six-cylinder engine will be replaced by a race-bred version of Toyota’s 5.0-litre V8 used in LexusF performance models as well as the current LC500.

Toyota – Australia’s top-selling new-car brand for 21 years in a row – will become the first non-US vehicle manufacturer to race in Supercars since the Nissan Altimaexited the series in 2019.

The car maker says it is “committed to racing in the Supercars Championship for five years,” and says it has considered joining the top Australian race series for “more than 20 years”.

The GR Supra will join the grid alongside the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, the latter having replaced the Holden Commodore at many teams in 2023, following the closure of the Holden brand in 2020.

Toyota GR86 coupes already race at Bathurst as part of the TGRA GR Cup – formerly known as the TGRA 86 Series – which runs in the form of support events at Supercars rounds.

Between 1985 and 1990, the Toyota Corolla won multiple races in its class in the precursor to the modern Supercars Championship, the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC), with a factory-backed team.

Numerous other Toyota models raced in the ATCC across assorted classes in the decades prior, dating back to the early 1960s.

The brand’s most famous moment from this era was arguably the debut of RaceCam in 1979 – providing world-first in-car broadcast vision – aboard Peter Williamson’s Celica.

Work on the GR Supra race car has already commenced through the company’s Australian design team at its Altona headquarters in Melbourne’s west, and has produced a scale clay model that was shown to media this week.

It will be developed and homologated for race use in partnership with Walkinshaw Andretti United, which for 27 of its 34 years in operation was known as the Holden Racing Team.

After it was no longer retained as the factory-backed Holden Supercars team from 2017, the squad made a controversial switch to Ford Mustangs for the 2023 season.

Toyota has committed to racing four GR Supras, at least two of which will be run by Walkinshaw Andretti United, and piloted by its current drivers Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood – in place of today’s Mustangs.

The team planned to race the other two cars is yet to be announced.

The planned 2026 entry date has come as a surprise, given it will coincide with the expected end of production date of the current GR Supra road car, which has been in local showrooms since 2018.

Toyota can continue to race the car in Supercars beyond that date, even without a road-going equivalent. It is unclear if there will be another generation of the GR Supra, which was developed with BMW and its Z4.

Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley told local media the company first considered entering Supercars more than two decades ago.

“How many times over how many years have you seen the speculation about Toyota going into Supercars? And you know what, it wasn’t always unfounded just before the turn of the century.

“I can tell you from my own experience that we seriously considered Supercars as we prepared to launch Avalon [a large sedan launched in 2000].

“Ultimately though … we decided the category back then was just a little bit too tribal. How times have indeed changed.”

Hanley said Australia is “one of the few major markets” where Toyota does not compete in the “dominant” motorsport category, and that Supercars “appeals to Australia’s heartland”.

“Supercars fans tend to go to a race track and spend a lot of time there,” he said.

“That makes it ideal as a touring motor show, enabling us to promote our broad range of vehicles and really engage with the crowd, because we know this is a driver-orientated sport.

“If some of the country’s best steerers like Chaz and Ryan are driving our car, then people are going to support us. That’s going to bring a lot of people into Toyota dealerships, people who don’t normally go there.”

He said Supercars is also “an ideal showcase for our GR range,” and that “the knowledge learned on track is also used to improve all other Toyota vehicles you see on our roads every other day.”

Toyota highlights its Australian 86 ‘grassroots’ racing series as a top “career pathway” into the top category, with current Supercars talents Broc Feeney, Will Brown and Cameron Hill as alumni of the junior championship.

Powering the GR Supra Supercar will be the Toyota group’s 5.0-litre naturally-aspirated ‘2UR-GSE’ V8, which has seen duty in a number of Lexus road cars.

Manufacturers can elect to use six-cylinder turbocharged engines in Supercars, but Toyota has elected for its familiar V8 that also powers its Toyota HiLux-styled Dakar Rally entrant.

Supercars will join a broad roster of global motorsport categories in which Toyota competes, from the Australian Rally Championship and TGRA GR Cup locally, to the World Endurance Championship racing at Le Mans, the World Rally Championship, NASCAR in the US, with GR Supras in Japan’s Super GT and international GT4 competition.

The company says its “participation in Supercars will provide valuable knowledge for the further development of its GR road cars,” which currently include the GR Supra, GR86, GR Yaris and GR Corolla.

The Walkinshaw Andretti United team – including its former names – is one of Supercars’ most successful teams, with 191 Championship race wins, seven Bathurst 1000 wins, and six Drivers Championships.

It is owned by Ryan Walkinshaw – son of the late team and Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) founder Tom – plus McLaren Formula One team CEO Zak Brown, and former US race driver turned team owner Michael Andretti.

“To announce our future with Toyota Australia, as it enters the Supercars Championship from 2026, is a fantastic honour and privilege for everyone at Walkinshaw Andretti United,” Ryan Walkinshaw said in a media statement.

“Toyota’s commitment to our team and to the sport is a historic moment, and one that shouldn’t be underestimated.

“We have developed a fantastic relationship with Toyota Australia through the Walkinshaw Group, and we are delighted to extend that partnership into Walkinshaw Andretti United – we can’t wait to share success together in 2026 and beyond.

“While the future is certainly exciting, our immediate focus is on the remainder of 2024 and the 2025 seasons, winning races, and sending off our relationship with Ford the right way.”

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