REV THE ENGINE: Toyota holds first-ever tryouts for TGR PH cup novice class
The start of the 2025 Toyota Gazoo Racing Philippine Cup is just around the corner.
By now, everyone’s bracing themselves for another action-packed racing season ahead. Part of this is getting new drivers to compete in the Novice Class of this prestigious motorsports affair.
“We have eight slots for this class and the vacant seats are three,” said Toyota Gazoo Racing section’s Juan Carlos Gaon during an exclusive interview with Inquirer Motoring after the recent tryout sessions held at the Clark International Speedway in Pampanga.
“We are set to select three from those we were able to try out today based on the activities, such as gymkhana, Time Attack, drag race, fitness test and the panel interviews,” he then continued.
According to him, they aspire to achieve more participants by sponsoring seats, thus making the races more available, not just to the grassroots, but also to the general public.
The aspirants who have undergone the training sessions were from the publishing and digital media, influencers, KOLs (key opinion leaders) and the Gazoo Racing Gran Turismo Cup members.
What racing firsthand makes
During the tryout sessions, Toyota Motor Philippines president Masando Hashimoto was also there to personally do his practice rounds prior to the actual competitions also in the Novice division two weeks from now.
This writer remembered him saying during his inaugural stint last year, “It’s really different when you’re actually experiencing racing on the ground or onsite.”
Picking up from where his mentor, former TMP president Michinobu Sugata, the person who started this whole Vios Cup thing in the country about a decade ago, left, Masando shared that in actually getting behind the of the race car he gets to really feel what the racers are feeling and really experiencing, “the adrenaline, the actual racing action on the track, everything.”
“It’s from here that you get to actually appreciate everything about the car, the racing, the competition and what we’re actually doing, what we’re trying to accomplish at the end of the day through our motorsports program.”
Personally undergoing tryouts
This writer was able to actually go through the recent sessions. Even though having only experienced the whole track and the other activities for the Toyota Gazoo Racing program even just briefly, I’d say that the experience was already quite surreal.
These tryouts for the Novice Class were done for the very first time by the Japanese carmaker and it consisted of the driving performance (40 percent), fitness test (20 percent) and the personality assessment (40 percent).
These criteria, not just evaluated how good the driving skills of the participants were, but also how fit they are to be able to deal with the physical demands of racing, particularly in the endurance part of the race series. For this particular activity, we did planking exercises to determine our fitness levels, with the ranks being based on how long one can hold the planking position. Meaning, the longer the time you can hold it, the higher you are in the pecking order in this part of the evaluation.
Moreover, a big part of the evaluation process was how the participants can deal with the media, assessing their “likeability” and “marketability” in getting sponsorships for their own possible racing careers in the near future.
In fact, they even pitched Formula One star Daniel Riccardo as the perfect embodiment of a “marketable racer”, for his fun, friendly, positive and “all smiles” personality.
They did this through a panel interview simulating an actual press conference with the media by having its regular Toyota executives and staff as panelists.
With this in mind and with the fact that this is just only the first time that Toyota is doing this (meaning, trial and error can be a factor), are the criteria and their corresponding percentages sufficient enough and justifiable in getting their preferred “best” drivers? What do you think? Do you have any suggestions?
