After a little tease yesterday during the 2021 FIA Gran Turismo Online Championship announcement, Polyphony Digital and Toyota Gazoo Racing have confirmed a third season of the online Toyota GR championship — but there’s a couple of changes.
Previously known as the Toyota GR Supra GT Cup, the series exclusively used the new GR Supra for the first two seasons. Yesterday’s announcement dropped the “Supra” from the championship’s name and, as we suspected, that reflects a switch from the Supra alone to more Toyota products.
The series will now go by the name of “Toyota Gazoo Racing GT Cup”, and will put players through seven rounds in six different Toyota cars on Sundays from April to August. That will act as a qualification series for the grand final which will take place as part of the season-ending FIA GT Online Championship in December. The schedule is as follows:
- Round 1 – April 25 – Toyota GR Supra ’20 – Weather Tech Raceway Laguna Seca
- Round 2 – May 23 – Toyota GR Yaris ’20 – Fuji International Speedway
- Round 3 – May 30 – Super Formula Dallara SF19 Toyota ’19 – Suzuka Circuit
- Round 4 – June 6 – Toyota 2000GT ’67 – Nurburgring
- Round 5 – July 4 – Toyota GR Supra Racing Concept – Autodromo De Interlagos
- Round 6 – July 18 – Toyota GR Yaris ’20 – Sardegna
- Round 7 – August 22 – Toyota GR 86 ’21 – Mount Panorama
- Grand Final – December 3* – TBA
A full calendar — including circuits, laps, tires, and other regulations — is yet to be revealed, however this overview does reveal that GT Sport will see at least one content update this year. That’s due to the appearance of the new Toyota GR 86 on the schedule in August, and the car is confirmed to arrive “mid-year” — likely in the FIAGTC calendar gap on the week of July 19-25.
Players will have two chances at each race, with two time slots for each round in the afternoon/evening, split by 90 minutes. Times vary by region, with the first slot at 0900 UTC in Oceania, 1200 UTC in Asia, 1700 UTC in Europe/Middle East/Africa, and 2300 UTC in Central and South America. North America players will have their first race at 2100 EDT/1800 PDT.
In total, 20 players will qualify from the seven-round championship, ranked by their highest four round scores. There’ll be nine finalists for the EMEA region, four from Asia, three each from North and Central/South America, and just one from Oceania. With four other drivers qualifying from a separate series of Toyota GR regional finals, that will make 24 players in the December final.
Given that the previous two Toyota GR GT Cup champions — Mikail Hizal in 2019, and Takuma Miyazono in 2020 — have both gone on to be Nations Cup champions in the same season, the result of the 2021 Toyota event is likely to be a good indicator of performance in the flagship series.
To take part you’ll need to sign up to the event through a specific section of the Gran Turismo website, which you can find here.
*Broadcast date
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