How Toyota is taking on Supercars

Toyota is in for a huge year on the world’s race tracks in 2026, with a strong presence in Formula 1, a renewed World Endurance attack, a continuing commitment in NASCAR and, for the first time, a new programme in Supercars.

The marque will take on Ford and Chevrolet in the Australian series with a V8-engined GR Supra that will change the two-make paradigm on which Supercars has built its category. Five Toyota GR Supra V8s will take on 11 Ford Mustangs and eight Chevrolet Camaros in a 24-car grid across 14 rounds in Australia and New Zealand. It’s a huge change, for both Toyota and Supercars.

Toyota will partner with two teams. The title-winning Walkinshaw Andretti United squad is now Walkinshaw TWG Racing, after TWG Motorsports, led by Dan Towriss, bought the shares owned since 2018 by United Autosports. It has parked its Ford Mustangs and, from its new automotive campus in the outer Melbourne suburb of Dandenong, will not only field two Supras but also take on the responsibility of development and homologation for the project.

It will also be Toyota’s sole engine supplier, and its newly built Supras will be raced by 2025 champion Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood.

Brad Jones Racing, which has downsized from four Chevrolet Camaros during the off-season, will run three Supras from its base in Albury, New South Wales. Andre Heimgartner and former Matt Stone Racing driver Cameron Hill will have a pair of new cars, while Macauley Jones will race what was one of last year’s Camaros, reskinned and re-engined as a Toyota.

After the initial track testing was conducted by WAU endurance co-driver Fabian Coulthard and former co-driver Warren Luff, Mostert and Wood tested the Supra for the first time in December. At the same time a Supra was being wind tunnel-tested in the USA alongside a Chevrolet Camaro and a Ford Mustang, as a part of Supercars’ long-running aerodynamic parity testing.

Toyota aims for track success to match the marque’s showroom performance

Photo by: EDGE Photographics

If the actual news of Toyota’s Supercars programme came as a surprise when it was announced in September 2024, its allegiances did not. The Walkinshaw Automotive Group already has links with the manufacturer, re-engineering US-built Toyota Tundra pickups to right-hand drive for the Australian market.

But even so, Toyota’s interest in going racing stayed a well-kept secret. “At Toyota, we have been toying with the idea of competing in Supercars for more than 20 years and now, with the right car, the right team, and a very strong partnership with the Repco Supercars Championship, the time is definitely right,” said Sean Hanley, then Toyota Motor Corporation Australia vice-president national sales, marketing and franchise operations and, after a recent promotion, now a senior executive advisor.

“With our entry-level Scholarship Series, and what is now branded the TGRA GR Cup continuing as a support category for Supercars, our joining the Supercars Championship was a natural extension of our support for Australian motorsport at all levels. And with our strong and ever-growing partnerships with Walkinshaw Andretti United and Supercars, we are in it to win it.”

“Once I met with the [Toyota] guys and spent some time understanding them, it seemed very clear this was a great opportunity that I couldn’t miss” Brad Jones

Brad Jones’s team has previously raced with the backing of Mitsubishi in Production cars, for Audi in Super Touring and Ford, Holden and Chevrolet in Supercars, but that had not meant that this was a simple switch.

“I’m a creature of habit so change is not always easy,” reckons Jones. “Once I met with the [Toyota] guys and spent some time understanding them, they took me through their vision, it seemed very clear this was a great opportunity that I couldn’t miss.”

How will the Supras perform? Supercars is a category based on technical parity and much work has been conducted in the off-season to level up the three racers. Even if that process has taken much longer than anyone in the pitlane would have realistically anticipated, such is the list of common components that, in theory, the two Toyota teams could roll out at the Sydney Motorsport Park opener in late February with set-ups similar to the ones run at the end of last season on their respective Mustangs and Camaros.

Toyota man Hanley (left) is “in it to win it” with team boss Jones

Photo by: Toyota Australia

That could be another imperative – at the time of writing, Mostert is due to be out of contract with WTWG at the end of the year. The signature of the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner on a new deal is bound to be sought-after, in particular since Chevrolet Racing faces the somewhat unusual prospect – with Triple Eight switching to Ford and Hill parting ways with MSR – of having no 2025 race winners among its eight-man roster of Camaro pilots coming into the new season.

If there is a question mark over the package, inevitably that must concern engine reliability. Alongside the 5.4-litre quad-cam Ford motor and the 5.7-litre pushrod Chevrolet, the Supras will be powered by a 5.2-litre version of Toyota’s quad-cam 2UR-GSE V8, developed in-house at WTWG but with input from outside contractors, including Swindon Powertrain.

It was full speed ahead at WTWG’s engine and machine shop, which worked through the usual summer holiday season, before the full race shop reopened on 5 January.

While Supercars teams’ level of engine reliability in the three-year Gen3 era has generally been impressive, there have been times when even the well-developed Ford and GM packages have had their problems. Most recently Mostert had his Bathurst 1000 hopes dashed with an engine failure in his WAU Mustang.

Even though much work has been done to bring the engines up to parity both on the dyno and with very limited track testing, it would be foolish to expect a blemish-free debut season for Toyota’s V8, which has never been raced in this unique specification.

Once the engine specification is homologated, the teams will be limited to 60km of track testing (both Toyota teams use Winton Raceway in Victoria) and then they will front up to the all-in pre-season test day at Sydney Motorsport Park on 18 February, allowing all the teams just eight hours of track time, two days prior to the season-opening Sydney 500.

Supercars’ duopoly of Ford vs Chevrolet ends with Toyota’s arrival

Photo by: Cianflone/Getty Images

If there is a question that may take some time to answer, it would be how Supercars’ fans will react to Toyota’s arrival. Since its inception in 1997 the category has been built on Ford’s rivalry with Holden – the Blue Oval versus the Red Lion.

After the demise of the latter as a brand 2017, the task of representing General Motors in the marketplace fell to Chevrolet and in 2023, with the introduction of the current Gen3 cars, the marque took that role onto the race track as well. Amid the fact that it sells relatively few vehicles in Australia, Chevrolet was immediately successful, winning the 2023 and 2024 Supercars titles.

But while the previous rivalry may have been widely acknowledged, it was not an accurate sample of the country’s showrooms. Toyota’s absence from the top tier of Australian racing has not been any reflection of its performance in the marketplace – in fact, quite the opposite. From 2003 to 2025 it led the sales for all marques down under.

The reality is that a generation of Australians have grown up with either a Toyota in the family driveway, or seeing an awful lot of them on the roads

Last year nearly one in five new vehicles registered was a Toyota and, while the number-one seller was Ford’s Ranger, close behind it were the Toyota RAV4 SUV and the Toyota HiLux pickup. 

Since the Holden Commodore vs Ford Falcon showroom rivalry ended, the reality is that a whole generation of Australians have grown up with either a Toyota in the family driveway, or seeing an awful lot of them on the roads – even if very few of them are Supras, and the car is not on sale anymore.

“[We thought] people might actually resent us for going in and winning that [Bathurst 1000] race,” says Hanley. “Of course, things have altered in the industry. So, things have changed, and, of course, the criteria around Supercars have also altered over time, particularly with the Gen3 platform, which enabled us to develop a product that we could put in.

Supra has undergone Supercars’ process of aero parity testing

Photo by: Supercars

“So what’s changed now is the fact that there’s less tribalism, and I think it’s mature enough now, and it’s clear from the amount of comments that we’ve had since we announced our entry that there is an acceptance to come into the race.”

Nissan raced in what was then V8 Supercars, with V8-engined Altimas, between 2013 and 2019, taking three wins, and Volvo raced its S60 in the category from 2014-16, scoring six wins and 23 podium finishes.

Mercedes-Benz also appeared in the category with Erebus Motorsport, with E63-based racers in what was a privateer effort, from 2013 to 2015. Toyota and its teams will be looking for more than those results.

Supercars has had a ‘MAKES WANTED’ sign in its shop window for some time; after two decades of watching and learning, Toyota has answered the ad.

As a part of the marque’s expanded global motorsport footprint it will be fascinating to see how the five Toyota drivers – including the reigning Supercars Champion and three other 2024-25 race winners – will account for themselves down under in 2026.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the March 2026 issue and subscribe today. 

Unique-spec V8 will be under the reliability spotlight due to limited track testing

Photo by: Geoff Colson/Supsercars