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Toyota Shows Newest Yaris WRC

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2021 Toyota Yaris WRC
Photo: Toyota

Toyota showed off its latest Yaris WRC car, which will compete in the upcoming FIA World Rally Championship. It features a fresh look intended to imitate the company’s new Le Mans Hypercar, revealed earlier in the month.

Though the production Yaris car is a hard sell in the United States where SUVs reign supreme, the hatchback is very popular overseas. Toyota has even seen fit to sell a GR-tuned version that journalists can’t seem to stop raving about, but it’s not available on this side of the pond.


GR Supra The GR stands for Gazoo Racing

And in the WRC, the Yaris is currently the machinery to beat. Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia drove the Yaris WRC to back-to-back driver and co-driver titles in 2019 and 2020, while Toyota scooped up the manufacturer title in 2018.

Since joining the competition, the Yaris WRC has enjoyed 17 victories and 322 stage wins, bringing home the crown for more than a third of the events in which it has taken part. For 2021, Toyota hopes to secure the driver, co-driver, and manufacturer titles all in one go, a feat that has so far eluded it.

To that end, it is planning to introduce a number of upgrades throughout 2021, though it has not specified what these will be. For reference, the 2020 model used a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder cranking out 380 horsepower and 425 Nm of torque (about 313 lb-ft), per WRC regulations.


Related: Meet the 2021 Toyota vehicle lineup

For the 2021 season, the Yaris WRC will no longer ride on Michelin tires, as Pirelli has become the sole supplier for the sport’s top categories. Ogier and Ingrassia will return to defend their title, with 2020 runners-up Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin behind the wheel of another Yaris WRC, and Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen — who finished fifth in their rookie season — taking driving duties in a third.

It will only be a few days before the Yaris WRC is put through its paces, as Toyota Gazoo Racing and its rivals head to the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo on Jan. 21. By the time the season ends in November, they’ll have raced all over the world, from Finland and Croatia to Kenya and Chile. Perhaps we should also get a stage in the United States, if only to expose customers to the car’s potential and finally convince Toyota to bring the GR Yaris to the States.