Toyota Racing will now be TOYOTA GAZOO Racing North America

[F1 Silver Arrows]

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62637243/toyota-us-motorsports-now-gazoo-racing/

Posting this because...

A) This is pretty cool
B) We need to have a thread to talk about anything GR related on here

 

[F1 Silver Arrows]

This guy jizzes himself for an "all-Toyota" GR Supra but it'll be only a 4-cylinder turbo-hybrid according to BestCar... you know what I'll say it, this is sacrilegious.

This video also talks about other upcoming GR cars and their supposed release dates, but I call cap on them.

EDIT: F*ck me... when I clicked on the video it was just a pic of the "A100" from its side, now that I post it on here he changes the thumbnail to the front 3/4 view and he superimposed his face again.

 

[mediumhot]

In other news today TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Europe GmbH responsible for Toyota Gazoo Racing in WEC changed its name to Toyota Racing now. They are out of their minds.

Toyota's European R&D center changes its name and competes in WEC with a new brand | Toyota | Global Newsroom | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website

Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) and TOYOTA RACING GmbH have changed the company name of the European research and development center and subsidiary "TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Europe GmbH" (Cologne, Germany) to "TOYOTA RACING GmbH" and will start to use the new name from January 7, 2026 onwards.

global.toyota

 

[F1 Silver Arrows]

In other news today TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Europe GmbH responsible for Toyota Gazoo Racing in WEC changed its name to Toyota Racing now. They are out of their minds.

Toyota's European R&D center changes its name and competes in WEC with a new brand | Toyota | Global Newsroom | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website

Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) and TOYOTA RACING GmbH have changed the company name of the European research and development center and subsidiary "TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Europe GmbH" (Cologne, Germany) to "TOYOTA RACING GmbH" and will start to use the new name from January 7, 2026 onwards.

global.toyota

I know this is to reflect the GR brand being spun off, but what confuses me is that they're keeping the GR name for the F1 team, WRC team, and customer racing programs...

My head is about to blow.

EDIT: Reading this press release, it seems like Toyota will be handling any development that has to do with bespoke cars. Gazoo Racing will focus on racing activities that has to do with regular production Toyotas.

So I assume they will eventually change the F1 team name...? And the GT3 program will be... Toyota Racing... because the GT was not a Toyota product before?

I give up....

Oh look... a PR stunt...

 

[ssun30]

I understand that Gazoo Racing was a terrible name to start with, but just as people begin to accept the name (especially the abbreviated GR) as normal, they have to rebrand once again.

This reminds me of the fall of the Japanese consumer electronics industry too. It's inevitable they would get replaced by Chinese and South Korean brands eventually, but their constant rebranding/renaming definitely accelerated the process. Try to buy a Japanese smartphone/laptop/TV or anything, you will be confused by the sheer number of product lineups that have no logical relationship with one another.

 

[F1 Silver Arrows]

I understand that Gazoo Racing was a terrible name to start with, but just as people begin to accept the name (especially the abbreviated GR) as normal, they have to rebrand once again.

This reminds me of the fall of the Japanese consumer electronics industry too. It's inevitable they would get replaced by Chinese and South Korean brands eventually, but their constant rebranding/renaming definitely accelerated the process. Try to buy a Japanese smartphone/laptop/TV or anything, you will be confused by the sheer number of product lineups that have no logical relationship with one another.

Most people that thought Gazoo was a bad name were just plainly uninformed and ignorance on its significance within Toyota culture. If Gazoo was a bad name then Scuderia also sucks too. Once people understood what it meant it became a household name in motorsports.

 

[mediumhot]

Toyota Gazoo Racing is currently leading Dakar 2026. The only reason I can think off for the name change is some autonomy now TRG former TMG in Cologne enjoys in Toyota empire. I dunno. tgr-europe.com now leads to toyota-racing.com as new and the best looking LeMans prototype car since Toyota GT-One has no GR branding at all. What's gonna happen when GR-GT3 debuts in WEC?
https://www.tgr-europe.com/

Just a small remark for F1SA. Scuderia phonetically cant be confused with anything other than italian language, even those who don't speak a word of italian have very little confusion if its italian or not. Together with Ferrari that follows it there is no confusion, and coincidentally word scud in english really helps it to embed what Ferrari is all about. Gazoo on the hand doesn't sound nor read like Japanese at all to a guy who doesn't know nothing beyond arigato and konnichiwa. I am bit more fluent in basic japanese but every time I read Guh-Zoo I think of a zoo. They could have just made it Gazu or Gazo so it doesn't have that vivid imagery association. Overall I think Toyota Fuji Racing (FR) could have been tons better but its not original Toyota, its Mitsubishis and someone's ego might be trippin.

 

[mediumhot]

As I was typing I got a word that this took place supposedly for the purposes of current flagship race car, flagship race car programe which sounds too much like future F1 works development. Apparently GR-GT3 has nothing to do with Toyota Racing. So if we are to dream should we just call it here first: Toyota Racing F1 with car number starting at TR

 

[F1 Silver Arrows]

As I was typing I got a word that this took place supposedly for the purposes of current flagship race car, flagship race car programe which sounds too much like future F1 works development. Apparently GR-GT3 has nothing to do with Toyota Racing. So if we are to dream should we just call it here first: Toyota Racing F1 with car number starting at TR

I don't think it's a dream. It's looking like it will be reality.

Soon, Toyota will be in every single motorsports series in the world, and the more I start to think about it... I'm starting to understand why Toyota is spinning off GR, and it actually makes a whole lot of sense.