Toyota Motor PH has big motorsport plans for 2025
Tamaraw race series in the works?
Toyota Motor Philippines has once again flexed its market dominance in 2024 by setting an all-time record in vehicle sales. With 218,019 units sold, TMP was able to corner a 46% market share in all new vehicles sold in the country last year.
In the same year, Toyota celebrated the 10th anniversary of its longest-running race series, the Gazoo Racing Philippine Cup. But it turns out, TMP has some big plans to welcome a new decade for its local motorsport activities in 2025.
TMP president Masando Hashimoto gave a few hints on what we could expect from their Gazoo Racing activities, and those include plans to take the all-new Tamaraw as a race car for the Philippine Cup.
While it does sound a bit odd to race a diesel pickup truck in the circuits, it’s not entirely impossible to do so as over in Thailand where it’s called the Hilux Champ, there’s already a race series for it. This would virtually expand the Philippine Cup race series grid as the existing Vios Cup race cars are set to continue racing this year, along with the invitational time attack races for owners of GR performance models in the country.
Toyota Gazoo Racing Philippines has already announced the dates for the GR Philippine Cup, but what’s interesting is that we could potentially see the race series take place in other areas. Hashimoto has further given us some insight regarding that during his announcement, as they are exploring the return of street races.
When the GR Philippine Cup was previously known as the Vios Cup, Toyota built temporary street circuits in places like McKinley Hill in BGC, Filinvest in Alabang, Mall of Asia, and even outside Luzon when they held a street race in Cebu.
Last but not least, TMP is also exploring the possibility of collaborating with another car brand for a motorsport festival. While Hashimoto-san did not identify the particular car brand, our closest guess would probably be with Hyundai’s N performance brand because of three factors - both brands operate in the country as a subsidiary of their parent companies, both brands have their respective performance models present in the market, and both are doing well in terms of sales.
Recently, Gazoo Racing and Hyundai N held a motorsport festival in Korea, where they attracted motorsport enthusiasts with thrilling driving demonstrations by both companies' World Rally Championship (WRC) teams, along with interactive fan programs.
The entire proceeds from ticket sales were donated to the Korea Automobile Racing Association to further promote and develop motorsport culture, and that could actually be a potential catalyst for growing Philippine motorsports even further.
