The Toyota GR010 will receive its first update in 2023.

The weekend at Fuji was Toyota's opportunity to prove that their 2025 problems were temporary. They didn't. The two GR010 HYBRID cars finished seventh and sixteenth on home soil, extending a podium-less season that began 11 months ago when the team won its last world championship.

The response came 48 hours later: Toyota will introduce an aerodynamic update for the GR010 before 2026. This is the first major modification in four years and an implicit admission that the current car cannot compete under the current Balance of Performance restrictions.

Photo By Carlos Castillo

"At Le Mans, we were slower than our competitors in top speed," said Kazuki Nakajima, vice president of Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe, during a conference with Japanese media. "This race made us aware that, even within the rules, there is much more we can do."

Testing of the modified car will begin in October at Paul Ricard. Toyota will not win anything else in 2025.

The Contrast with 2024

In 2024, the team accumulated 190 points, won three races (Imola, São Paulo, Bahrain) and lifted the constructors' trophy. In 2025, with six out of seven races completed, Toyota has 105 points and sits in fourth place, 99 points behind Ferrari.

The best result of the year was fourth place at Spa-Francorchamps in May. The worst came in Brazil, where both cars finished fourteenth and fifteenth, the first time both GR010 cars finished outside the top 10 in the same race. In Qatar, they started with fifth and sixth. In Imola, they repeated with fifth and seventh. In Austin, they were ninth and fourteenth.

And now seventh and sixteenth at home.

Kamui Kobayashi, driver and team principal, spoke after Fuji. "We need to solve the problems we have had and build an extremely fast car, and then have it be adjusted by the Balance of Performance," he said. "We need a car so fast that it is capable of winning even when assigned the maximum weight and minimum power."

The Limits of the Evo Joker Rules

The Toyota hypercar has not received major modifications since 2022-2023, when the team adapted the car to use narrower front and wider rear tires. Those changes did not count as "evo jokers" (the modifications allowed by the rules) because Toyota argued the original design was compromised by regulatory changes.

Each manufacturer can use up to seven evo jokers before 2029, when the current homologation expires. Toyota has not revealed how many it has spent. It also did not specify which aerodynamic elements will be modified for 2026.

Nakajima only said that the improvements aim for top speed, the main problem for the GR010 at Le Mans, where Toyota finished fifth in June. The team has not won the French race since 2022.

Photo By Carlos Castillo

The Age of the GR010 vs. the Competition

Toyota will close 2025 in Bahrain on November 8th, at the circuit where it won its last race almost a year ago. Mathematically, it can improve its position in the championship, but it cannot catch Ferrari.

The GR010 debuted in 2021 and will be five years old in 2026. The Ferrari 499P and Porsche 963 entered in 2023. BMW and Aston Martin arrived this year.