Forget everything you thought about Toyota because the Japanese brand has re-discovered its motorsport heritage in showroom style.
While we’re only just getting ready for the all-new Yaris GR to be upon us November this year, Toyota is now beginning to bring its all-new supercar (yes, a Ferrari-beating weapon) to attention, building anticipation for a full product reveal.
First shown two years ago as a concept car with 735kW, the GR Super Sport is another homologation to support Toyota’s motorsport championships. In this case, the GR Super Sport will be one of perhaps only 20 production cars produced so that Toyota can compete in the new Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) class next year. Twenty being the minimum number of road-going cars a manufacturer must produce to be eligible.
The FIA also stipulates the cars must be built within two years of racing. But given there may only be 20 examples, don’t get too excited if you think we’ll see Camry-equivalent pricing on a Porsche 918 beater at our local Toyota dealership.
However, it will certainly be a production car, and looking at confirmed LMH class rules points to the likely drivetrain details it will house. The rules say that all entrants must weight at least 1100kg, and have a hybrid powertrain consisting of 200kW front-mounted electric motors augmenting a traditional combustion engine for a total output of 500kW at all four wheels.
As per the concept, Toyota detailed a 2.4-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol using ‘Toyota Hybrid System Racing’ technology to produce 735kW, so the 500kW should be easily achievable. It may, however, elect to build an all-new drivetrain.
Revealing the red, black, and white (Gazoo Racing colours) prototype to the public, Toyota showed the car off in Europe over the weekend at Le Mans with Austrian racing driver Alex Wurz behind the wheel.
“It was an honour to drive this development version of the GR Super Sport for the first time in public, and especially at a circuit like Le Mans which is so closely connected to this car,” said Wurz.
“The GR Super Sport was born at Le Mans so this felt like a homecoming. This was my first time to drive the car, so a demonstration lap doesn’t allow me to push the limits but I could already feel that the GR Super Sport has the potential for incredible performance. I could feel the similarities between the GR Super Sport and the TS050 Hybrid (the racing car) in terms of performance, particularly the four-wheel drive and the hybrid system. But the engineers tell me this was only a small taste of the GR Super Sport’s true performance so I am super excited to drive it again one day in the near future.”
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