At the last leg of the 2025 Toyota Gazoo Racing Philippine Cup (TGR PH Cup), Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) formally announced what many had been suspecting all year: We will see Toyota Tamaraws racing next year.
TMP’s annual motorsport activity used to be called the Toyota Vios Cup, for obvious reasons. But when they changed the name to Toyota Gazoo Racing Philippine Cup and didn’t focus on a single model name, we felt it was setting the stage for other models in the Toyota stable to go racing. In other markets, you can already see 86s and Tamaraws racing, so it’s not far-fetched for this to happen in our country.
At a press conference during race day, TMP president Masando Hashimoto, TMP assistant vice-president Andy Ty, and TMP supervisor Juan Carlos Gaon made the big announcement, and fielded questions from the media.
There will be a Tamaraw one-make race in next year’s TGR PH Cup. TMP hopes to have 30 Tamaraws on the grid next year, joining the 70 Vios race cars currently in active racing. Same as with the Vios, a Tamaraw race package will be made available for sale. These special Toyota trucks will have suspension and safety upgrades, along with a limited-slip differential.
To show what the Tamaraws can do, a special round with five modified units driven by past Vios Cup champions was held at Clark International Speedway, in the middle of TGR PH Cup activities. You don’t see pickups racing every day, and the sight of red and white Tamaraws barreling down the speedway’s main straight was a crowd pleaser. It will also be interesting to see what kind of livery these Toyota workhorses will have once the private teams get ahold of them.
A Tamaraw tuned for drag racing was also showcased. Tuned by aftermarket veteran Autoplus, this one had upgraded turbochargers and a massive rear wing. We heard figures of 700Nm and horsepower in the high 300s.
These are definitely exciting times for Toyota and racing. The Japanese carmaker continues to show that it’s not always about sales, but about the racer and the fan journey. Putting your cars (and trucks) on the track, under the intense pressure of competitive motorsports, is how you build ever better cars, as the TMP top brass like to say.
As the 2025 TGR PH Cup came to a close, a more exciting 2026 season awaits.
