Toyota Racing Reveals the NASCAR Supra!

supraboi

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New pics and article.

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Remember when we thought Toyota was going to show a production version of the new Supra at the Geneva auto show this past spring, and then it turned out to be a concept for a race car?

They’re back to tease us again, and it’s still not with the production car. That’s right – it’s another race car. This one, though, is more than a concept.

This stock car version of the 2020 Supra (that launch year detail about the production car was confirmed at this reveal) is set to compete in the NASCAR Xfinity Series starting at the first race of the 2019 season at Daytona International Raceway next February.

There are a lot of things that are fascinating about the decision to place Supra in a NASCAR national series.

The first is that wedging a car with unique and dramatic design elements into NASCAR’s highly controlled Xfinity template is no easy task.

To help, Toyota Racing Development recruited its design partner, Calty Design Research of Newport Beach, California. Supra joins a long list of styling projects that Calty has worked on with Toyota that includes the last three versions of the Camry from the Monster Energy Cup Series, the Tundra from the Camping World Truck Series, and the FT-1 concept on which the new Supra is based.

“A big part of the challenge on this car was that, honestly, we couldn’t really change a lot (from the previous Camry Xfinity car),” says Kevin Hunter, President of Calty Design Research. “The front face of the production car is very sculptural, very three-dimensional. We had to figure out how to get that impression into this car.”

The Xfinity template is more restrictive than the Cup template to help keep development costs down for the second-tier series, which leaves the design team with only a scant few areas that are legal to modify: the hood, upper half of the nose, front fenders, quarter windows, and the rear of the tailgate. Everything else must stay in strict compliance.

That said, this still leaves more room than one would think for aerodynamic improvement, from subtle shifts in the body work to more extensive development in the undertray.

“It’s a box, it’s not a singular data point,” says David Wilson, Toyota Racing Development’s President and General Manager. “Competitively, there’s a corner of that box that is the most optimum corner to be in, where you have the least amount of drag, you have the most amount of downforce. As we evolve our cars, we try and work closer and closer to that optimum.”

The most dramatic section of body work on the new Supra is the air scoop structure around the headlights. Toyota and Calty managed to integrate this into the final design – though the scoops are sealed off and not functional on the Xfinity car – while creating a minimum of aero disturbance.

“Looking at this area in this transition in this corner,” says Andy Graves, Group Vice President and Technical Director for TRD, “it would be really important for us to make sure that we’re keeping the air attached at that point. Otherwise, you can have some pretty serious problems, especially as it pertains to the air reattaching to the deck lid downstream and keeping rear downforce on the car.”

Graves and his crew demonstrated their success by putting the car on display at the Aerodyn wind tunnel in Mooresville, South Carolina, and using a smoke wand to show how air passes directly over the scoops and around the side panels without dispersing.

Whether this will be a success in a race situation is a complete unknown until February. Research and development technologies have advanced at a stunning pace, but they still can’t perfectly simulate the high traffic and air turbulence of an active race. At any rate, Toyota says so far, so good.

The second thing that’s intriguing about putting a Supra in NASCAR is that it runs counter to the entire reason that Toyota entered the sport in the first place. If Toyota uses NASCAR to show off how American it is, why choose Supra? It’s not being built in the United States – it will be assembled in Europe at Magna Steyr’s facility in Graz, Austria, as a joint initiative with the BMW Z4 – and there may never have been another nameplate more steeped in Japanese motoring lore.

“It’s a good time for it,” says Paul Doleshal, Senior Manager of Motorsports and Asset Management for Toyota Motor North America. “I think we’ve grown to a level of acceptance within the sport that allows us to embrace the global nature of our business – all OEMs are global businesses – so, to be able to explore some of the product and not be shy of our global presence.”

“We’re still relevant in that Americanization piece with Camry and Tundra and where they’re produced (Kentucky and Texas, respectively), and that is still is a major part of our conversation. But we shouldn’t be ashamed or shy of anything we build. We build some of the best cars in the world, and we’re proud of it. We shouldn’t be ashamed to put them on a racetrack and let them compete against everybody else.

“We’ll see the acceptance numbers, see how it goes when it gets on track at Daytona, and we’ll go from there.”

With this launch and the concept from Geneva, that’s now two Supra-related products that have been dangled before enthusiasts like proverbial carrots. And Toyota’s not done yet: a third racing iteration, completely separate from the sports car racing or NASCAR realms, is to be announced before the production car’s ultimate reveal.

“We’re working on some initiatives to bring Supra back to the consciousness of the world,” Wilson says. “It’s going to be really, really cool. NASCAR is not the be all, end all. It’s just part of the strategy for Supra.”
 

vb22

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Aside from the initial concept, it sounds like Toyota USA had no part in the development of the production car.
 

BrettS

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“The most dramatic section of body work on the new Supra is the air scoop structure around the headlights. Toyota and Calty managed to integrate this into the final design – though the scoops are sealed off and not functional on the Xfinity car – while creating a minimum of aero disturbance.”

Hmmm maybe hinting that the production car will in fact have functional vents?

“And Toyota’s not done yet: a third racing iteration, completely separate from the sports car racing or NASCAR realms, is to be announced before the production car’s ultimate reveal.”

What other type of racing could it be?
 
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vb22

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^Maybe they got confused? :dunno: Even A70 said Toyota USA really had no involvement with the A90.
 

A70TTR

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Calty designed the FT-1, but I am unsure to what sort of involvement they had with the production car. The two are obviously very different despite cues.
 

NYC_Supra

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Agree that NASCAR body style looks severely outdated and the selected livery color scheme didn’t do it any favors drawing your eye to the awful looking blended roofline.

However, strictly from a marketing standpoint they want the Supra to have as much exposure and compete in as many forms of racing (Supra vs the world mentality) as possible. While not traditionally a Camaro and Mustang competitor leveraging the NASCAR fan base and jumping into the ring with two volume sellers to boost sales makes a lot of sense. Also, for the road car to go out gunning for its traditional competitors plus the Camaro and Mustang specifically in the highest performance versions ZL1 1LE, GT350/500 distances it from the BMW version and will be great to watch especially if it out right destroys those cars on a track.
 
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SupraStew85

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Man proportionally this new Supra/Monte Carlo esque Nascar colab is sure weird.
Well could be worse the new supra could be based of a BMW Z....... waaaaiiit a minute.:p
 

greaseman

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“The most dramatic section of body work on the new Supra is the air scoop structure around the headlights. Toyota and Calty managed to integrate this into the final design – though the scoops are sealed off and not functional on the Xfinity car – while creating a minimum of aero disturbance.”

Hmmm maybe hinting that the production car will in fact have functional vents?

“And Toyota’s not done yet: a third racing iteration, completely separate from the sports car racing or NASCAR realms, is to be announced before the production car’s ultimate reveal.”

What other type of racing could it be?
Rallye Supra!
 

johnny_10196

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The NASCAR Toyota Supra’s Big Nose Actually Makes it Faster

Last month it was announced the Toyota Supra would join the NASCAR Xfinity series for the 2019 season. The radical-looking Supra NASCAR body looks very different from the Camaro and Mustang XFinity Series bodies. You can thank the California-based team at Toyota’s Calty Design Research studio for that, which wanted the composite body to look as close to the production A90 Supra as possible. To do this, they incorporated the new Supra’s rather pronounced nose, but it wasn’t as easy as just submitting the design to NASCAR, group vice president and technical director for Toyota Racing Development, Andy Graves told us in an interview.

“Right at the start Calty did that design (with the nose),” Graves said. “Actually, the very first version with that center ‘snorkel’ on the hood, it actually stuck out from the front bumper like 2 and a half inches. Very, very pronounced. It actually looked much cooler than even what we have right now.”

But the original design protruded a bit too much, so the team went back to the drawing board and came up with a less exaggerated version. Toyota then ran the design past NASCAR to ensure they hadn’t broken any rules. After all, no one had tried to implement such a design on a NASCAR body before.

“First we had to go to NASCAR because the lower half of the nose is a common piece amongst all three manufacturers, so from the split line, the lower half, that’s a mandatory part,” Graves explained. “No one has ever produced anything for the top surface of the nose that stuck out past the bottom half. So we had to make sure, even though it wasn’t in the rule book, that NASCAR wasn’t going to come back when we tried to get it submitted and rule that out, but they were fine.”

Then Graves and his team turned their attention toward the aerodynamic advantage, or disadvantage, the nose provided. It turned out the ‘snorkel’, as Toyota refers to it, actually improved airflow at the front of the vehicle in some way – although Graves didn’t elaborate on exactly how this works.

“It’s definitely helped us on the aero side, it ended up being a great design feature that we worked out,” Graves said. “We were very fortunate that ended up being a (positive) styling effect, on the Supra. When we first looked at it (the Supra’s nose) we said ‘we’re not sure that’s going to work’ but it ended up being a positive for us.”

You’re probably wondering the same we did when we looked at the NASCAR Supra’s protruding nose: “how’s that going to work in the bump draft, though?” The smart minds at TRD thought of this (of course) and ran the design past their star drivers to ensure this wouldn’t be a problem.

“We talked to Kyle (Busch), talked to Erik Jones and talked to Christopher Bell to make sure that the nose protruding like that was not going to mess them up in any way as far as bump drafting goes,” Graves said. “They were all perfectly fine, they said as long as you make it strong enough that we don’t smash in that piece then we’ll be more than happy with it. We’ve run some simulations, and actually, if you get far enough over to the side, by the time you get out that far, you’re not going to hook him or anything. So that’s not an issue.”

The Toyota Supra’s appearance in NASCAR’s second tier Xfinity Series will happen around the same time the road car debuts in early 2019. The Supra is a bit of an odd choice for NASCAR, if you ask us, but the automaker is insistent on taking the sports car racing everywhere – ovals included. You can thank chief engineer Tetsuya Tada for helping to employ that mindset. Tada would also like to see the car race at Le Mans one day, but the automaker hasn’t committed to anything official yet with the FIA.

We’re excited for the road-going Supra to debut and all, but we’re really excited to watch NASCAR’s XFinity Series drivers bop each other in the rear with the Supra’s big nose (or snorkel, whichever you prefer) at superspeedways like Talladega and Daytona.
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supraboi

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Does this mean the nose will make the production car go faster too?
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