The Toyota GR Corolla Is Going Racing
Toyota’s little hot hatch, the all-wheel drive GR Corolla, is going racing in America. No, it’s not headed off tarmac like its rally-oriented GR Yaris sibling—The GR Corolla TC, unveiled at Toyota’s GR Garage in Mooresville, North Carolina, will instead hit big-name road courses in SRO’s TC America series starting in 2025.
The GR Corolla TC will face off against the likes of Honda’s Civic Type R, the Mini Cooper JCW, and Hyundai N cars, and will be the first in its class to send power to all four wheels.
The race car will essentially crib the street car‘s drivetrain wholesale—same 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder, same eight-speed automatic that will be available in production GR Corollas beginning in 2025—but with a few tweaks. A racing-specific Bosch ECU with revised tuning parameters controls the engine and its stock-sized turbo, and other Bosch units control the drivetrain and ABS. The gears are purely paddle-actuated, though the factory shifter remains on the center console. The front and rear Torsen differentials, which retain the stock ratios, get additional cooling, as does the transfer case and the viscous coupling that relays power to the rear wheels. Finally, while owners can change how much power gets relayed to the rear wheels on their production cars, the GR Corolla TC must maintain a fixed ratio per series regulations.
Other race car accommodations abound—this is no warmed-over showroom stock class. Monster Alcon brakes—six-piston fronts and dual-piston units in the rear—fill the Corolla’s wheels. Toyota Gazoo Racing-designed struts and JRi remote-reservoir shocks will help keep Pirelli slicks gripping the pavement. Aero bits, including an enormous rear wing and a slightly more subtle front splitter, provide a heap of downforce.
Toyota is not fielding a factory team in SRO. Rather, like with its GR Cup series, GR Corolla TCs will be campaigned by racing teams and privateers. Pricing and further details, we’re told, are coming soon. Toyota’s GR Cup cars, which are converted GR86 street cars built in the company’s Mooresville facility, cost $132,000, so with the Corolla’s added complexity it wouldn’t be a stretch to figure it’ll be north of that number.
Just ahead of the reveal of the GR Corolla TC, Toyota announced that Toyota Racing was changing its name to Toyota Gazoo Racing North America to more clearly articulate the relationship between its Racing efforts worldwide and those in America. Paul Doleshal, group manager for motorsports for Toyota North America, shared the rationale for the change: “That will put us in a better position where our championship-caliber program that we have been running for many years will now align under the total umbrella of 60 years of motorsports activity for all of us around the world,” he said. It’s not just a simple branding change, either. “Some of the transition elements have already started—our engineers at TRD have already begun working globally with the development of some of our other race vehicles.” Toyota Gazoo Racing is also cultivating a more global driver development effort, opening up opportunities for drivers to learn across disciplines and have a broader array of opportunities at their disposal.
Toyota has long had a strong presence in racing across nearly every type of wheeled motorsport, from drifting to NASCAR. These two announcements are reminders that the brand is committed to keeping that momentum going.
