Toyota has formally announced it has scrapped development of its GR Yaris WRC for the 2021 World Rally Championship season, as predicted by DirtFish last week.
Toyota issued a short statement via Twitter on Monday in which it confirmed its current Yaris WRC would be used in 2021, and that the development work it had completed with the GR Yaris would instead be used to inform the development of its 2022 car.
“Our plan is to continue improving the current Yaris WRC – and compete with it in 2021 as well,” it said.
“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we collected a lot of valuable information from the tests when we were developing the GR Yaris and the WRC version.
“Now we will take this know-how and use it to design a car for the 2022 regulations.
“With gratitude to everyone working in the medical field to fight the virus, we will make every effort to achieve the best results.”
The GR Yaris was due to be introduced for a single campaign only before the adoption of hybrid rules for the 2022 WRC season.
Development of the car began auspiciously, with the team suggesting last month that the GR Yaris was already “very close” to the pace of its current WRC challenger despite the coronavirus pandemic halting its testing program.
But Toyota said at the start of this month that it would not run the 2021 car in June despite the relaxation of testing restrictions, which were first introduced in April and from which Toyota was not able to gain an exemption to test the GR Yaris.
Toyota has resumed WRC testing in Finland this week with its current Rally1-spec Yaris.
DirtFish’s Colin Clark is attending that running, and will have updates throughout the week on the resumption of Toyota’s test program.
