Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa puts on a show

Toyota Gazoo consolidates its brand in SA

The days when the letters TRD sent shivers down the spine of many a competitor are gone and have been replaced a new set. TGRSA (Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa) has become synonymous with all the performance goodies you've come to expect from the Japanese automaker. Gazoo Racing came to prominence with its victories at Le Mans and the Dakar as well as WRC (World Rally Championship) and as any petrol head knows, once manufacturers win races, their customers want what the winning teams have.

Related: Why the new Toyota GR Yaris needs to come to South Africa

This led to almost all the models available from Toyota now getting some sort of GR fettled derivative. From Hilux's and SUVs to the new Supra and even most of their small city hatches, you will start seeing the GR nameplate gracing the rear of their vehicles.

Toyota South Africa decided it was high time that they put all the current Gazoo Racing initiatives on show in one place and that place was Gerotek. The decades old test facility played host to a number of activities that allowed us to get up close and personal with all these projects.

Toyota Gazoo Racing GTC team

Toyota has a very storied history of participation in local motorsport, from Group N in the nineties as well as helping privateer teams later and continue to add to their motorsport legacy.

Michael van Rooyen and Mandla Mdakane have already had a very good start to their GTC race season. The GTC (Global Touring Cars) series is the premiere league of local motorsport, with involvement from a number of vehicle manufacturers, with Toyota putting the full weight of the GR brand behind the team.

The sheer pace of these GTC machines is hard to describe as a few quick laps around the dynamic handing track, strapped into the temporary passenger, seat proved.The team is working hard to hopefully win this year's championship and are hyper focussed on reliability and pace on race weekends.

Toyota GR Driver Academy

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Toyota had just opened their GR driver academy, the news that the academy had just received distributor rights for an amazing product called EZ-Drift. This product will be used at the academy to train drivers in skid control.

The product is a high tech compound sleeve that is fitted over the rear wheels of a front-wheel drive car and when put into use, will allow the rear end of the car to break into an oversteer condition, allowing the instructors to train participants in controlling out of control cars.

Our test along the slalom course was fun and entertaining but also highlighted how easily front-wheel drive cars lose steering when the rears come unstuck. After a few laps it became a lot easier to catch the loss of traction, and you could actually drift full sections. 

The EZ-Drift fitments are a game changer for the academy and are sure to add a new dynamic to their training sessions.

Toyota Gazoo Offroad Racing  

No day with the GR brand would be complete without the offroad racing team from HallSpeed in attendance. Giniel de Villiers and Guy Botterill were on hand to thrill visitors with a rip-roaring passenger ride through the bush in one of the SACCS (South African Cross Country Series) racing Hilux's.

This 5 minute eye-opening experience puts into perspective just what these drivers put themselves and their navigators through during a race weekend and gives one just the slightest taste of what Dakar may be like.

A sneaky first look at the GR Yaris

The cream on the GR cake was the sneaky first look at the GR Yaris GR Four that recently made waves globally. The cheeky GRMN Yaris was also in attendance, bringing back a few pleasant memories of its crazy local introduction. Although we weren't actually able to drive the only GR Yaris model currently in South Africa, we were able to go over it and snap a few pictures. The not-so-secret is out though, and it has been confirmed that South Africa will be receiving an allotment of these mind-bending super hot hatchbacks.

If you are one of the performance junkies that are eagerly awaiting the imminent arrival of these hatches you will need to keep your eyes open as the local launch will be happening soon, and you will have to be quick as numbers are very limited and these will be snapped up very quickly.