The Toyota GR Corolla is about to get the competition pedigree to match its looks. The hot hatch already looks ready to be a rally car, but it hasn’t been rallying before. Toyota is changing that by bringing the car to the American Rally Association championship for 2026, with a car called the GR Corolla RC2.
Toyota Gazoo Is Serious About Racing
Toyota Gazoo Racing’s GR Corolla Rally RC2 is based on a car the company showed at the Tokyo Auto Salon earlier this year. The car will use a 1.6L turbo-four just like the road car, but it’s based around the engine from the back-to-back championship-winning GR Yaris Rally2.
The new car will be driven by Seth Quintero. Quintero is no stranger to rally or to Toyota, driving a Hilux pickup in the World Rally Raid Championship the last 2 years. Last year, he finished ninth in the Dakar Rally in his GR pickup.
“Don’t pinch me, I don’t want to wake up from this dream!” Quintero said in a statement. “So honored and blessed to be joining this elite team and expanding my skills across multiple different categories!”
Quintero’s co-driver is Topi Luhtinen. The Finnish rally driver has raced in the World Rally Championship since 2021. This is a big change for him in a new country, new series, and, crucially, moving from holding the wheel to holding the route book.
Gazoo Racing Hopes This Will Make Better U.S. Road Cars
The team will be made up of Toyota Gazoo Racing engineers and mechanics. Toyota’s performance brand said that will help its staff with hands-on development and learning to develop its people in the crucible of racing.
Toyota also hopes that building rally cars for American roads will help its road cars. Gazoo Racing said that making better cars and better “motorsports-bred” cars were its aim.
Corolla Has a Long Rally History
The Toyota Corolla is no stranger to the dirt, though it’s been sitting out for a long time. It’s been more than 25 years since the last official Toyota Corolla rally car, but at least that car ended things with a bang.
Toyota’s Corolla WRC won the World Rally Championship in 1999, taking 15 podiums along the way. This was back when Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Ford all had serious factory efforts with legends like the Evo 6, the WRX STI, and the Focus RS. It left the series at the end of the year to get ready for a move to Formula 1.
Long before that, Toyota’s first WRC win ever came from another Corolla. That one was back in 1973, and, appropriately, it was also in the U.S. in the first year of the series.
GR Corolla Will Miss First Event
The new team will miss the first rally of the year, the ARA Sno Drift event on Feb. 6 in Michigan. Instead, it will make its debut at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood on March 13 in Missouri. The team will then compete in the remaining six 2026 ARA National Championship events.
Last year, rally driver and freestyle mountain bike medalist Brandon Semenuk took the title in the series behind the wheel of a Subaru. Connor Martdell in a Skoda grabbed second prize over Travis Pastrana in another Subaru WRX.
2026 will be a big year for ARA. Subaru and now Gazoo Racing will be there. But there will be other new teams, including Honda and Mini factory efforts. Is this the beginning of a new golden era for rallying in the U.S.? Can Quintero replace Semenuk as the hot driver bringing young people into the sport? If you want to know, tune in this season.
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