– Ott Tänak has joined Toyota as a test driver to contribute to the development of the Japanese brand’s vehicle for the 2027 World Rally Championship (WRC) season.
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As first reported by Dirtfish, Toyota has since confirmed to the English edition of Motorsport.com, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com in the Motorsport Network, that Toyota has brought Tänak out of retirement to test and develop the new car based on the technical WRC regulations for 2027.
Tänak, who won the WRC title as a Toyota driver in 2019, is not active this season as he announced at the 2025 WRC season finale in Saudi Arabia that he would take a break from full-time rallying in 2026. This week, the 38-year-old Estonian returned to the cockpit of a WRC car when he tested the 2027 prototype for the first time as part of his new role in the Toyota team.
Toyota began the test program for 2027 at the end of 2025 and has since covered more than 2,000 kilometers. The test drives took place on asphalt, gravel, and snow. Before Tänak’s return this week, the tests were conducted by Juho Hänninen as well as the team’s four current full-time Rally1 drivers – Elfyn Evans, Takamoto Katsuta, Sami Pajari, Oliver Solberg.
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So far, Toyota is the only mainstream car manufacturer known to be developing a car that complies with the WRC rules for 2027. The vehicles will be built with a cost cap of 345,000 euros and will largely be based on the current Rally2 cars. They will feature a double wishbone suspension. Brake and steering systems will be derived from the current Rally2 specifications.
Which car model is Toyota betting on for 2027?
In recent weeks and months, images and videos of test drives with the Toyota for the 2027 WRC season have appeared on social media. Notably, the vehicle has a significantly different shape than the current GR Yaris Rally1 of the brand.
This has led to speculation about which car model Toyota will race next year. So far, the team remains tight-lipped on this. Technical director Kevin Struyf refers to a “prototype” that is still being developed.
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“At the moment, it is just a rally prototype. For 2027, the rally rules are changing for the first time in that the specifications for the bodywork are quite open. This means that for a manufacturer it is not yet really clear in which direction it should go. So it is just a basic test vehicle, a prototype,” says Struyf, adding: “Many people want to know which model it will be, but at the moment there is nothing concrete. It is simply a prototype.”
Prototype for 2027 will be further developed
“The problem is,” the Toyota technical director continues, “that there were some technical aspects that were not entirely clear or precisely defined by the FIA [when Toyota started development]. Basically, we are continuing the development of the test vehicle we saw in Portugal. The car will undergo further test drives in April. And soon another chassis will be built. Then we will, let’s say, test the final model a bit more.”
Toyota has already conducted comparison tests between the prototype and the current GR Yaris Rally2. Struyf explains: “It is a Rally2 car or very close to it. Currently, there is nothing that would make the car faster than a Rally2 car. It is just another Rally2 car with slightly different dimensions and a different suspension.”
Struyf describes the suspension as “one of the main topics for 2027,” because “for the first time in a long time in rallying, we will have a double wishbone suspension. It is similar to the one in our current Rally2 car, and that is exactly our benchmark that we want to surpass.”
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“We have made comparisons [with the GR Yaris Rally2], but only to make sure we are not completely wrong. I would say the feedback [from the drivers] is quite good at the moment. There are things that still need to be improved, but that is always the case when switching to a new car with new dimensions. There are always pros and cons, but we believe we have good tools to develop a good car,” says the technical head of Toyota’s WRC program.
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