Gazoo Racing began as the passion project for motorsport enthusiast and heir to the Toyota throne, Akio Toyoda. Even as the grandson of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, he would not be afforded any privilege to use the Toyota moniker as his team was “similar in level to a bunch of enthusiasts,” according to team history. This essentially meant that Naruse and Toyoda started as a customer racing team since they were not technically backed by the brand itself.
As stated in an interview with Automotive News, Toyoda and his driving mentor also adopted aliases when they publicly announced their intention to race in order to remain “brand-neutral.” After all, Akio’s last name is Toyoda. With little access to the company and an even smaller budget, Team Gazoo would race the discontinued Toyota Altezza, also known as the Lexus IS300 to all the North Americans reading this (via Toyota Gazoo Racing).
With a ragtag group of Toyota employees, Naruse and Toyoda would enter their amateur racing project in one of the most grueling races known to man: the Nürburgring 24 Hours. Known as the “sacred place for new car development” to the GR team, Team Gazoo understood that in order to build better cars, the engineers and mechanics had to understand what it meant to push a car to the absolute limit. The team’s success at the event gave Toyoda the confidence to expand upon the subsidiary in 2009 after being promoted to president of Toyota, allowing TGR to assist in the development of cars such as Lexus LFA and Toyota GT86.
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