Now, this is a proper shake-up. According to Autosport, Toyota has pulled back the curtain on a truly wild strategy for the 2027 World Rally Championship, revealing plans to field an expanded six crew line-up split cleanly across two separate teams and two distinct car models.
Under the new technical regulations, the reigning champions will homologate both GR Celica and GR Yaris body shapes. But do not panic about a split in the garage performance-wise, because Toyota has stressed that underneath those different bodies, the two machines are completely identical. The entire concept actually originated from World Rally Team chairman Akio Toyoda himself, with the bold goal of promoting multiple products, creating better stories, and boosting fan engagement.
This has been one of the technical challenges of taking on the regulation in this way,
The driver assignments are fascinating. Defending champion Elfyn Evans will drive the GR Celica—marking the iconic nameplate's return to the WRC for the first time since the 1990s—alongside Oliver Solberg and Sami Pajari under the banner of Toyota Racing. Meanwhile, the GR Yaris will run under the Gazoo Racing moniker, driven by Takamoto Katsura and returning world champions Ott Tanak and Kalle Rovanpera, with the latter contesting a partial campaign.
Team principal Jari-Matti Latvala explained to Motorsport.com that the move was made possible because the new cost-capped cars are less expensive than the previous generation. "The new regulation has a nice aspect in that the new cost capped cars are less expensive than the previous generation, so the cost reduction will help you to run more cars with the same budget," Latvala said. He added that bringing back the Celica taps into its legendary history from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, complete with three titles in the nineties.
Latvala also noted that the crew split was decided entirely without input from the drivers themselves. Tanak and Rovanpera went straight into the Yaris team because both won their championships in a Yaris. Meanwhile, the team wanted to pair the current champion Evans with the new young generation of Solberg and Pajari in the Celica.
Achieving this on the technical side was no small feat. Technical director Tom Fowler explained that matching the drag figures across both body shapes presented a major engineering hurdle. "This has been one of the technical challenges of taking on the regulation in this way," Fowler said, noting that development required hitting identical aerodynamic targets with two physically different models to ensure fair competition.
