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2019 Toyota Supra Goes Endurance Racing

Remember the GR Supra Racing Concept? Toyota will modify that vehicle for the Nascar Xfinity Series in 2019, but Gazoo Racing has one more plan for the Japanese twin of the BMW Z4. More to the point, Toyota wants to go all out in endurance racing.
2019 Toyota Supra racing car 55 photos
Photo: Stefan Baldauf/SB-Medien
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After winning the LMP1 category in the FIA WEC super season with the TS050 Hybrid, the Supra has been tested at the last round of the VLN Endurance Racing Championship Nurburgring. Photographed in great detail at the four-hour race, the prototype competed in the SP8T class, designed for cars with turbocharged engines of up to 4.0 liters in displacement.

Chief executive officer Akio Toyoda signed the car before running some laps under the nickname Morizo. The other two drivers included Daenens Herwig and Yabuki Hisashi, and as you can tell from the pictures where the hood is wide open, the 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six doesn’t feature the engine cover we’ll get on the Supra 40i.

The Supra Gazoo Racing prototype finished 116th overall, which means that Toyota was at the back of the pack. It should be mentioned that competing for results wasn’t the priority on this outing, but the gathering of valuable information for further development. In addition to Xfinity and VLN, the Supra will also compete in the GT500 class of the Super GT series and the GTE class of the World Endurance Championship.

Scheduled to premiere in 2019 at the Detroit Auto Show in January, the all-new Supra will be offered with a choice of two engines. The entry-level option is a two-liter turbo, and chances are Toyota will hybridize the Supra at some point in the future.

The ZF 8HP eight-speed automatic will be the only transmission option on offer in the first instance. Assistant chief engineer Masayuki Kai confirmed a six-speed manual for right-hand drive markets, and with some luck, left-hand drive markets such as Europe and the United States could also get the three-pedal setup.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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