“What the Hell Is a Gazoo?”: NASCAR Fans Remain in Oblivion as Toyota Racing Undergoes Major Title Revamp

Toyota Racing Development (TRD) is undergoing a new change in its title that better aligns with the Japanese manufacturer’s vision of new branding across the motorsports division. Starting from 2025 onwards, the TRD banner will be formally known as Toyota Gazoo Racing North America. This move will bring the North American operations of Toyota under the global TGR (Toyota Gazoo Racing) umbrella.

However, this move by Toyota won’t see any changes to the titles and names of the races running at the Cup Series and Xfinity level. The NASCAR Cup Series will continue with Camry branding, where the Xfinity entries will race under the branding of GR Supra. Meanwhile, the Toyota trucks competing in the Truck Series will also continue to carry the TRD Pro badge.

Sharing the thought process behind this switch in titles, Paul Doleshal, group manager at TMNA, said, “The transition to Toyota Gazoo Racing is an opportunity for our world-class racing program to better align with Toyota’s global motorsports efforts while simultaneously continuing the championship-level results we’ve earned under the previous banner here in the U.S.”

“Globally, the efforts of GR Company and Toyota Gazoo Racing is a philosophy of utilizing motorsports to build ever-better production vehicles, pushing machinery to the limits on track so the production cars are more capable and reliable. We look forward to having our motorsports program continue to be on a global stage and contributing even further to the development and engineering of exciting-to-drive vehicles,” Doleshal added.

However, the NASCAR fans were left confused by the adoption of the name Gazoo Racing over TRD. In trying to clear the air or get more details behind this move, many of them hit social media sites.

Fans unable to decode the meaning behind TRD’s new branding

The Gazoo originated out of necessity for an in-house Toyota Racing team when they competed in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Hiromu Naruse was the test driver leading the charge for the team. However, they weren’t allowed to run with the name ‘Works Toyota Racing,’ and this is when they adopted the word Team Gazoo. While the name has been adopted for the Toyota motorsports team across different countries, it has now made its way to America. Unaware of the roots of TGR, this fan wrote, “What the hell is a Gazoo?”

Some even started to connect a few dots with this name change. The Haas Team in F1 announced the return of Toyota as a technical partner for the first time since 2009. Toyota Gazoo Racing is the branding that will appear on the race cars. Now that TGR has landed on U.S. soil, this could indicate the Haas Factory Team switching OEM partners. “With the news that Toyota Gazoo Racing is partnering with Hass in F1. Should we expect the Hass Factory Cup Team to switch to Toyota in 2025?”

TGR is a well-known entity when it comes to its presence in the European motorsport market. They compete in auto-racing series like the World Rally Championship, World Endurance Championship, and World Rally Raid Championship. Surprised to see so many NASCAR fans unaware of TGR’s presence in motorsports, a user on X replied, “Have people here really not heard of Gazoo Racing before? No one watches WEC or WRC?”

Not only in motorsports, but the TGR branding has also helped Toyota in designing consumer sports cars. In 2019, they launched the GR Supra, and they have continued with this series. In 2022, they also launched the GR Corolla, which was specifically built for the North American market. Taking a jab at the NASCAR fan trying to ridicule the Gazoo branding, this fan added, “So many ignorant nascar fans 🤭🤭🤭”

Outside of stock car racing, the Toyota teams in the NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car are already racing under the TGR banner. This is also true for GT4 drivers competing in the IMSA and SRO circuits in the GR Supra GT4 EVO. Highlighting this trend of Gazoo branding becoming more prevalent in the United States, another fan added, “Saw that on Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Wikipedia page. It seems like Toyota is slowly phasing in the branding in the U.S. as it’s already used in NHRA and sports car racing.”

Apart from just the title change, it will be interesting to see what TGR brings to the table and whether there will be new projects for its teams competing in NASCAR.