Game on! Toyota Supra to join V8 Supercars from 2026

The future of the V8 Supercars motor racing series in Australia is safe until at least the end of this decade.

Japanese car giant Toyota – Australia’s top-selling automotive brand for the past 21 years in a row – will join the V8 Supercar motorsport category from 2026 as part of a five-year deal that will take it to the end of the 2030 season.

Despite its success in showrooms, it is the first time Toyota has entered the top level of motorsport in Australia in the modern era.

Toyota Supra sports-cars – with V8 power rather than the turbocharged six-cylinder engine in showroom models – will line-up against a field of Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros.

The top secret deal is so fresh the company is yet to build a prototype of the race car, instead making the announcement yesterday with these computer-generated images and a scale model.

The first two Toyota Supra V8 Supercars will be developed by Walkinshaw Performance, the former factory Holden Racing Team outfit which switched to racing Ford Mustangs two years ago.

A second team – with two more Toyota Supra V8 Supercars – is also planned, though yet to be announced.

Toyota’s entry into V8 Supercars will provide a much needed boost to Australia’s top motorsport category, which has been struggling to attract new automotive brands and sponsors – and TV audiences – since the end of the Holden Commodore versus Ford Falcon era in 2017.

There have been calls in some motorsport circles for V8 Supercars to switch to the highly successful NASCAR formula from the US, which also has Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota as the three main protagonists.

But the controversial switch from V8 Supercars to NASCAR regulations has been scuppered indefinitely now Toyota Australia is about to line-up on the V8 Supercars grid.

While the company is more than a year away from the start line, Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley reportedly told media yesterday: “We’re not in it just to make up the numbers.”

A media statement from Toyota Australia quoted Mr Hanley as saying:

“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. This is truly (a) historic moment.

“It will also provide an opportunity for a continuous career pathway for drivers and teams that we first established when we launched the one-make Toyota 86 Series nine years ago as an affordable grassroots circuit-racing category, run as a support series at select Supercars Championship events around the country.

“For proof, you only need to look at this year’s Supercars grid with Broc Feeney, Will Brown and Cameron Hill all having cut their racing teeth in Toyota 86s, with many more 86 alumni racing in Super2 (the second tier category below V8 Supercars).”