The Japanese giant last month announced plans to enter the Australian series in 2026 with its Supra model, competing alongside traditional rivals Ford and General Motors.
Having the world’s biggest car brand engaged in Supercars is thought likely to help the category with its bid to race in South-East Asia.
Supercars CEO Shane Howard mooted as much just days after the Supra announcement when he and other members of category management travelled to the Singapore Grand Prix.
Hanley tells Speedcafe that Toyota Australia has invested in the category based on its local footprint, but would welcome any efforts to expand in 2026 and beyond.
“This is a totally locally-run program for us. This is under the Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia brand,” Hanley explained.
“Having said that, obviously we collaborate and we seek endorsement from Toyota Gazoo Racing Japan.
“If at any time a global opportunity becomes available and we could align to it, we certainly would.
“We certainly never entered this series with any understanding there would be global expansion.
“If that was to occur, that would be significant benefit that we didn’t even know about. That would be icing on the cake.”
The Supercars Championship will add to Toyota Australia’s existing motorsport platforms; the Toyota GR86 one-make classes and the Australian Rally Championship.
Globally Toyota is heavily invested in the World Rally Championship, World Endurance Championship and NASCAR, and also recently formed a collaboration with Haas F1.
The Haas F1 technical deal was announced over the Bathurst 1000 weekend, mere moments after Toyota Australia unveiled its clay model of the Gen3 Supra Supercar.
Hanley says Toyota’s diverging motorsport programs – which in the case of WRC, WEC and F1 all include hybrid technology – are all part of a big-picture strategy.
“The announcement from Japan that Toyota is going back to Formula 1 is very welcomed by us, obviously,” he said.
“Some of the questions we’ve been getting asked is, ‘why are you going into V8s?’. Well, I’ll tell you why – it’s part of our multi-pathway strategy.
“It’s part of our ethos to never leave anybody behind on the journey to decarbonisation. This is what people want.
“It doesn’t mean you can sit back and say we don’t want to decarbonise. You won’t get away with that, that’s yesterday’s thinking.
“You learn from these experiences, you evolve and in the fullness of time, you bring down your CO2 footprint.
“It also lends itself to stressing to our fanbase and our customers that we are serious about learning from motorsport and the benefits of what we learn from motorsport will go into our cars.
“And they will be fun cars to drive. It finally says to the world that performance cars aren’t dead. Performance fans are alive and well, this is what they want, and we’re here to give it to them.”
Hanley has declared that Toyota is not pushing Supercars to introduce hybrid technology but is open to it in future.
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