Toyota has unveiled a teaser of the 2026 evolution of its GR010 Hybrid World Endurance Championship Hypercar.
Since its debut in 2021, the GR010 has been nothing short of a legend. Two straight victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours, four consecutive world championships, and a place in the record books as the car with the most victories in WEC history, with 20 triumphs.
Yet its aura has dimmed. The last win came almost a year ago in Bahrain, and its last Le Mans triumph dates back to 2022. For a manufacturer that measures its identity through the 24 Hours, that absence feels like an eternity.
A 2025 season to forget
The 2025 campaign has been a nightmare. With only one round left on the calendar, only Toyota and category newcomer Aston Martin are yet to have scored a podium in the Hypercar class. For a reigning world champion, the fall from grace is staggering.
The reasons are brutally clear. Until São Paulo, the GR010 was always the heaviest and least powerful car on the grid, its performance strangled by Balance of Performance regulations. Stripped of raceability, the car has looked helpless, particularly on the long straights where it was left gasping for air.
"I did my best, but we can't really compete with the other manufacturers," admitted Toyota team principal and driver Kamui Kobayashi after another difficult outing last weekend at Fuji, where its lead car finished seventh. "Compared to Peugeot and Aston Martin, we looked like LMP2s."
Le Mans was equally dispiriting. Despite the #8 briefly leading on Sunday morning, a left-front wheelnut issue ended its charge. And even without this setback, it could not have matched Ferrari or Porsche on pace. "We only got into that position because we had executed a flawless race until then," reflected technical director David Floury.
The statistics speak louder than words: since rejoining the top class in 2012, Toyota has never endured a podium-less season. Yet with only Bahrain left, that unwanted milestone looms large.
Fighting the BoP
Why, then, invest in a major upgrade when the BoP is supposed to equalise the field? The answer lies in the so-called "performance window". While dual-band BoP is intended to level top speeds, where a car sits within that window dictates its fate. Toyota finds itself trapped at the wrong extreme: maximum weight, minimum power.
"There are always things we can optimise within the performance window," vice-president Kazuki Nakajima told The Race. "The idea is to find the optimal position within it."
Toyota finds itself, like Peugeot and Aston Martin, at one end of that window, but in the opposite situation: whereas the 9X8 and Valkyrie often run at minimum weight and higher power, the GR010 is almost always maxed out on weight and pegged back on power. That leaves the team with no choice but to extract performance elsewhere, a daunting task.
What's new in 2026?
The teaser images offer tantalising clues. The GR010 remains instantly recognisable in profile, but the details have shifted. The nose now slopes downward instead of bulging; the headlights have been reshaped; the rear wing abandons its straight-line design. Every detail points to a car honed for efficiency, drag reduction and, above all, reclaiming lost top speed.
"We're looking for improvements in many areas, not just top speed," Nakajima told The Race. "But Le Mans showed us that top speed remains a critical issue. It should have been corrected by the dual-band BoP, but there was still a gap. That's something we need to work on, alongside the aero and making the car more driver friendly."
The rear light signature has been completely reworked, drawing clear inspiration from Toyota's GR LH2 Racing Concept, the liquid hydrogen-powered testbed aimed at shaping the brand's future. Beneath the surface, changes are also expected to the powertrain and electronic control systems.
"There's always room for improvement - whether in the powertrain, the control systems, or other areas," Nakajima added. "That's why we race."
This marks the GR010's third major evolution. In 2022, a change of tyres reshaped the car's dynamics. In 2023, Toyota used the second allowed homologations to shed weight and optimise balance. With five "evo jokers" available between 2021 and 2027, we can expect at least two will be deployed for the 2026 upgrade.
The road ahead
Originally, Toyota considered introducing these changes for 2025. But the plan was pushed back after the governing bodies switched to a new windtunnel for homologation, moving from Sauber's Hinwil facility in Switzerland to Windshear Inc in North Carolina, a site already familiar to LMDh competitors as it is used by IMSA.
"This year's Le Mans convinced us to go further," Nakajima admitted.
Following airport testing in Germany in mid-August and multiple windtunnel sessions, the 2026 GR010 Hybrid is set to make its track debut at Paul Ricard on October 8-9. More windtunnel work is scheduled for later in October, before a three-day test at Lusail in Qatar from December 10-12.
Qatar will also host the 2026-spec car's race debut on March 28, at the opening round of WEC's 14th season. By then, Toyota's mission will be crystal clear: to return to the Le Mans summit.
For the Japanese giant, there is only one acceptable outcome in June 2026: victory at La Sarthe. Anything less will be viewed not merely as a disappointment, but as failure.
