2024 will mark the first break in the major livery design for the Toyota Yaris since 2017. Whilst the original colours represented Japan, Akio Toyoda felt there were too many cars with similar colours and so, asked for a change. The new colour scheme will bring the Yaris in line with the company's GR010 Hypercar entries in the 2024 World Endurance Championship. The reigning world rally champions have opted for a matte black look, but this is by no means the only new addition to th team. While the GR Yaris was the car to beat this season winning 9 out of the 13 rounds, Toyota is planning to bring upgrades for the 2024 season.
Toyota's Technical Director in a recent interview said,
I think we are in quite a good situation where we don’t have something you would have to define specifically as a weakness that needs emergency attention, but of course there is still things we would like to improve.
We have a plan for next season already in place to bring some upgrades and it is difficult to say too much about those at the moment.
For sure, we see that the main situation now is generally uncomfortable performance compared to Hyundai at the moment in the sense that in every type of condition we are very close. It is fair to say you never know at which rally which will be the best performing car between the Toyota and the Hyundai. We want to change that.
We are looking to add performance to the car all of the time in terms of work that really needs proper development or a [homologation] joker application.
Of course we are always working on small details of reliability but in terms of upgrade packages we are not expecting to do anything.
With the reigning champion scaling his activities back to a part time roll in favour of some down time and other motorsports, this years runner up, Elfyn Evans will lead the team away at the start of the Monte Carlo Rally on January 25th.
Both their rivals will unveil their new look cars next year, with MSport set to unveil at the Autosport International Show on 11-14 January.
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