2023 Toyota Gazoo Racing Festival: A celebration of all things Toyota and Speed

Toyota Motor Philippines has just celebrated its 35th anniversary in the country. To emphasize this momentous occasion for the Japanese brand, it held the 2024 Toyota Gazoo Racing Festival, a celebration of all things Toyota and speed. 

The Japanese automaker held several displays and events at the festival to showcase its Gazoo Racing performance vehicles lineup. That said, we will discuss the highlights of the first day of Toyota’s anniversary celebration.

Akio “Morizo” Toyoda strutting his stuff

You rarely see the chairman of one of the biggest Japanese brands in the world doing donuts and drifting around a track. 

Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation Akio “Morizo” Toyoda did exactly that at the 2024 Toyota Gazoo Racing Festival as he showcased his racing skills behind the wheel of multiple vehicles.

He first showed off what he could do with the Toyota GR Yaris WRC car, doing donuts for the crowd and taking a few lucky passengers around.

He then joined the Gymkhana challenge for the last segment of the program to give the audience and live viewers online a quick taste of what he can do behind the wheel of a rear-wheel drive car, specifically the Toyota GR86.

While he was only there for the first day (August 23, 2023), it was truly a sight to see as he exuded a down-to-earth aura and was a true car enthusiast at heart, showing that he knows his stuff when it comes to performance cars and what Toyota customers want about motorsports.

Rally and Drift

Aside from the WRC car, Toyota also displayed its GR Yaris prototype vehicle, used for a quick exhibition with a couple of donuts and drifts around the set track.

It showed how far Toyota has come in its performance division and how much work the Japanese brand put into its rally car that can be used as a daily driver. 

Toyota also had on display its drift-spec Toyota Corolla Altis. Unlike its front-wheel-drive counterpart, this vehicle version is rear-wheel drive and is heavily modified to suit the purpose of drifting. The automaker also had a quick exhibition for the vehicle in a similar format to its other performance cars. 

Even the Toyota GR Supra was quickly tested to its limits on a tight autocross-oriented track.

The Toyota GR86 also appeared for the Gymkhana event, where Filipino and Japanese racers went head to head to be crowned the 2023 Gazoo Racing Festival champion.

International formula racer, Marlon Stockinger, bested out a field of veteran racers including multiple drifting champion Alex Perez, Vios Cup champion Luis Gono, celebrity drifter Yan Agoncillo, and Japanese race drivers Norihiko Katsuta and Masahiro Sasaki.

Other vehicles and merch

Aside from the racing displays, Toyota Philippines also showcased its new IMV 0 concept car  in its sports pickup configuration.

The concept vehicle will eventually be turned into a production model that will inherit the Toyota Tamaraw nameplate as it is aimed to be an affordable utility vehicle.

Toyota also had other models on display, such as the Toyota Fortuner GR-S, the new Toyota Zenix, and other GR-Sport-related vehicles.

Merchandise was also available for fans of the Japanese brand, ranging from caps to shirts and much more. 

The 2023 Toyota Gazoo Racing Festival will run until Thursday, August 24th, so there’s still time to catch these fine racing machines and daring drivers in action along with Kamikaze and Parokya ni Edgar playing at the Quirino Gandstand in Manila.