Toyota Racing Cars

The Toyota Corolla nameplate has deep roots in drifting, most notably with the AE86 “Hachi-Roku” produced during the ‘80s. However, in the 30-plus years since the demise of the original 86, the Corolla has been a bit of a pariah when it comes to the business of getting sideways and smoky. Nevertheless, Papadakis Racing has transformed the modern front-wheel drive twelfth-generation 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback into a winning entry in the cutthroat Formula Drift Championship.

Of course, breaking away from the pack has been a staple of team owner Stephan Papadakis’ career, and it shows everywhere in this latest build. Beyond the extensive rear-wheel drive conversion and complementary bespoke suspension, the Toyota also arrives to the party with half as many cylinders as most of its competitors, while still producing four-figures on the dyno thanks to mind-blowing levels of boost and a hearty shot of nitrous. Then there’s the unique five-door body style, which is enhanced by a custom carbon-fiber widebody kit.

Read on for all the nitty gritty details on what makes this machine so incredible.

Updated 03/19/2019: When this article was originally written, the author assumed Ryan Tuerck would drive the featured Corolla race car in the 2019 Formula Drift season. This is incorrect. Papadakis Racing built the featured Corolla race car for Toyota for demonstration purposes, and Ryan Tuerck is not a regular driver for the Papadakis Racing team. The author apologizes for the error.

Sometimes, this job comes with some pretty cool perks. Last week, during my visit to Savannah, Georgia, where I drove the 2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan, Toyota had a little surprise waiting for me - a ride-along with Ryan Tuerck in the mind-altering Papadakis Racing Corolla Hatch drift car. Suffice to say, the experience made quite the impression on me.

Updated 03/19/2019: When this article was originally written, the author assumed Ryan Tuerck would drive the featured Corolla race car in the 2019 Formula Drift season. This is incorrect. Papadakis Racing built the featured Corolla race car for Toyota for demonstration purposes, and Ryan Tuerck is not a regular driver for the Papadakis Racing team. The author apologizes for the error.

Last week, I was in Savannah, Georgia, driving the new 2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan and while I was there, Toyota had a surprise waiting for me - a ride along with Ryan Tuerck in the 1,000-horsepower Papadakis Racing Toyota Corolla Hatchback drift machine! It was an incredible experience, and it served as a stark reminder of just how amazing drifting really is.

Updated 03/19/2019: When this article was originally written, the author assumed Ryan Tuerck would drive the featured Corolla race car in the 2019 Formula Drift season. This is incorrect. Papadakis Racing built the featured Corolla race car for Toyota for demonstration purposes, and Ryan Tuerck is not a regular driver for the Papadakis Racing team. The author apologizes for the error.

With Peugeot exiting stage left, it seemed like Mini and Toyota would battle it out for the victory in the 2019 Dakar Rally and, indeed, it was Toyota man, Nasser Al-Attiyah, who delivered the goods, winning in a commanding fashion as his nearest rivals faltered.

The 2019 Dakar Rally, which keeps being a mislabeled event as it’s been taking place in South America for a decade already, proved grueling although the competitors never went further than Peru. It was the first time since the inaugural edition that the Dakar didn’t travel across more than one country, but that didn’t mean it lacked in either excitement or drama.

There are images aplenty of the new Supra, but these days, Toyota’s been testing a race-prepped version of their new sports car at the Nordschleife which we think might be the mule for the upcoming sportier Supra.

With this occasion, we got a chance to get a little closer to the Supra, and we like what we see. For example, we got an eyeful of the interior, with the center stack lacking any sort of camouflage with the big infotainment screen on top of the central attraction. It all seems to be, apart from the racing wheel, pretty much stock, so there’s not much guesswork left to do about how the interior will look, given that some renderings of the interior and exterior were also leaked this week.

There seems to be some sort of a trend, wherein automakers are using their expertise and experience from the motorsport industry to build street-legal hypercars. First, it was the Mercedes-AMG Project One and the Aston Martin Valkyrie, and now we have the Toyota GR Super Sport. While the former two was derived from Formula 1 knowledge, Toyota will build the GR using its FIA World Endurance Championship experience. However, it’s the seven-figure price tag that caught our attention. Is this for real?

The Toyota Supra is set to return to the market after a 16-year absence. Rumored for many years and teased since 2017, the Supra will make its public debut later in 2018, but Toyota has already introduced a couple of race cars. We’ve seen the first one in the form of an FIA-spec concept at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, while the second one is a somewhat surprising entry in the NASCAR Infinity series.

Unveiled ahead of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the Daytona International Speedway, the Supra replaces the Camry in the Xfinity Series starting in 2019. The Camry-based race car leaves the series after ten competitive years, during which it won four manufacturer championships, two driver titles, and 147 wins as of 2018. This is the first time when the Supra name will be used in any NASCAR series.

Continue reading to learn more about the Toyota Supra NASCAR race car.

The production version of the next-generation Toyota Supra has yet to be unveiled, but the Japanese automaker has already built two race cars based on it. We saw the first one in concept form at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. Now, Toyota revealed that the Supra will compete in the NASCAR Xfinity Series starting in 2019.

They say a driver’s only as good as the car he’s driving, and if that’s the case, Fernando Alonso and the Toyota TS050 Hybrid race car are a match made in heaven. The two-time Formula One world champion recently took his skills to the Le Mans 24 Hours where he raced for the Toyota team that ended up romping its way to its first-ever Le Mans title.

Alonso played a big role in the championship-winning car, helping it finish first in a spectacular and dominant display of endurance racing with teammates Sebastian Buemi and Kabuki Nakajima. Alonso’s first try at endurance racing didn’t go unnoticed, either. On the contrary, much of the discussion before the race was squarely on his shoulders, specifically on how he could translate his skills from open-wheel F1 racing to endurance racing.

Evidently, the results showed that Alonso was not only up-to-the-challenge, but he actually thrived in his new environment. New video evidence even surfaced of the Spanish racing ace carving up the competition while onboard the TS050 Hybrid. The video lasts only 84 seconds, but in that span of time, Alonso was able to overtake, at least by my count, a total of 21 cars. 21! That’s the equivalent of overtaking the entire Formula One grid!

It’s an incredible sight to see, especially from someone who doesn’t have as much experience in this kind of racing environment as some of the people he was racing with. Sure, the TS050 Hybrid’s dominance played a big role in Alonso making it look so easy, but just as people that a driver’s only as good as the car he’s driving, the car only goes where the driver takes it. Alonso proved that, with a championship-caliber car, he’s still one of the best race car drivers in the world.

All he has to do now is hop inside an IndyCar racer and win the Indianapolis 500. That’s the only race he needs to win to become only the second driver to win motor racing’s equivalent of the “Triple Crown.” Now that he has the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 Hours under his belt, it’s almost a certainty that we’ll see him in Indy at some point in the near future.

Toyota is entering the hypercar space with a 986-horsepower monster that will be developed by the Toyota Gazoo Racing team. The model, called the GR Super Sport Concept, will use technology derived from the TS050 Hybrid LMP1 race car that just finished off a dominant run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving Toyota its first-ever Le Mans title in the company’s history.

After knocking on the door multiple times in the past few years, Toyota finally broke through, winning its first-ever Le Mans title in dominant fashion. The winning #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid beat its sister car, the #7 TS050, on the back of its trio of drivers, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Buemi, and Kabuki Nakajima. The Le Mans win was the first for two-time F1 champ Alonso, who took a big step in becoming only the second racer in history to achieve the “motor racing triple crown.”

The new Toyota Supra isn’t even out yet, but there are already rumors that the Japanese automaker is looking into having it race in NASCAR during the 2019 season. According to the rumors, a race-spec version of the Supra would be entered in the second-tier Xfinity Series, leaving the Camry race car to remain in the flagship Cup Series.

We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again - we here at TopSpeed love ourselves a tasty engine swap, especially when it involves head-spinning redlines. That’s why we’re going a bit gaga over this one - say hello to the Toyuki Starbusa.

Rocking 200 horsepower and just 780 kilos (1,720 pounds) of curb weight, this RWD three-door is a mighty impressive little machine. It’s certainly got the goods to embarrass all kinds of bigger, more expensive machinery, especially when you put it on a twisting, challenging hill climb course.

That much is obvious from this 2-minute, 14-second video clip, which shows the Toyuki Starbusa sprinting up the course at the 2018 Leadfoot Festival like a scalded mountain goat. The video includes both an in-car point of view and shots from along the course perimeter, and with that little Suzuki engine at full song, it’s a feast for both the eyes and the ears.

Famed Baja racer BJ Baldwin is back again with is Recoil series, and boy, is it worth the wait! Recoil 4 takes place in Cuba, whose borders were just recently opened to U.S. citizens. It seems Baldwin didn’t care to tread lightly, despite the fledgling relationship between the two governments. Armed with his 850-horsepower Toyota trophy truck, Baldwin tears through the hilly streets of Havana and the vegetation surrounding the historic coastal city.

Think of Recoil as the off-road version of Ken Block’s Gymkhana. Insane stunts followed by high-horsepower rampages down empty streets followed by slow-motion, high-resolution videography showcasing the vehicle’s and driver’s abilities.

Recoil 4 earned some world records in the process. Baldwin’s custom-built truck soared 191 feet through the air, setting the record for the longest residential jump in a trophy truck. Undoubtedly, Cuba has never seen anything like this before.

Those fascinated by slow-motion video of suspension systems in action should find this nine-minute film nearly pornographic. Especially eye-catching is Baldwin’s dance over logs at the 4:45 mark. It’s amazing how that long-arm suspension and those King racing shocks soak up the bumps at blistering speed. It’s also incredible how much capability big tires and huge power give a rear-wheel drive truck. This thing is unstoppable!

With Donald Trump officially elected as the 44th President of the United States, automakers have found themselves under a lot of stress thanks to his “build in American or pay dearly” strategy. Well, that actually led to a bit of a theme at the Detroit Auto Show, with automakers giving nods to the U.S.-based production in one way or another. One effort to prove U.S.-production loyalty came in the form of Toyota’s NASCAR racer that looks somewhat similar to the all-new Toyota Camry. Of course, most of the body is fake and all, but from a distance, it looks quite similar. More importantly, however, are the two nods to U.S.-loyalty that are advertised on the car.

First off, there’s a big decal just above the rear windscreen that says “Built in Kentucky.” That’s right, Toyota’s NASCAR racer is actually built in the Southern U.S. But, that wasn’t the only thing that caught my attention. There also a bright green decal around the fuel filler cap that reads “American Ethanol,” a simple but effective way to let everyone at the show know that the Japanese brand relies on American-made ethanol and American citizens to keep its presence on the track known. It makes complete sense, but it leaves on to wonder: Would these decals be there if Trump wasn’t pushing automakers for U.S. production so much?

That’s hard to say, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t be – or they wouldn’t be so prominent anyway. On a side note, since we’re here, I want to point out that it must take a lot of dedication to sit in one of these racers for so long. After getting a good look at the inside, I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing comfortable about them. The seat is hard, and there’s sheet metal everywhere – all with sharp points and thin edges. In case you haven’t had the chance to look inside an actual NASCAR racer, I snagged a few shots of the interior as best I could. You can check those out by clicking the “Photos” tab above, and I suggest you do if you really want to see what NASCAR drivers put up with for hours at a time on the track.