Here’s How Toyota Gazoo Racing Built A One-Off Zero-Emission Racer

Toyota has built some pretty incredible racers in its time. Cars like the Toyota Celica ST185 triumphed in World Rally in the 1990s and the TS050 Hybrid has become a formidable Le Mans racer for the Toyota Gazoo Racing team. Now, the Japanese team has a new racer that’s ready to conquer the streets of Europe, and this time it’s a one-off creation that doesn’t create any emissions.

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The new racer comprises a carbon fiber frame, a unique three-wheel setup and no engine at it’s heart. There’s not even a hydrogen fuel cell powering this thing as it’s instead run on the arm strength of German Paralympian Andrea Eskau. In case you haven’t guessed yet, this new machine isn’t a car. Instead, it’s a bespoke handcycle built with the sole purpose of winning Paralympic gold medals at the 2024 Paris games.

Eskau has been a formidable force in para-cycling for almost 20 years, having won gold medals at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Paralympic Games. Now, she’s heading to Paris in search of more medals with a motorsport-inspired handbike, designed and built by Toyota Gazoo Racing, reports Endurance Info.

The German athlete will compete in the road cycling competition later this week with a handcycle that’s built around a carbon fiber tub where Eskau will sit. At the rear, there are two wheels and the front is made up of a larger wheel to steer and two paddles that Eskau will spin to move her forward. This is the pretty standard setup for an Olympic handbike, but Eskau’s comes with a few race-inspired upgrades courtesy of TGR, as Endurance Info explains:

TGR-E’s first project with Andrea, to create an ergonomic seat insert in 2012, was the seed which grew into a long-term partnership, fuelled by the passion of an incredible athlete and TGR-E engineers keen to support her. Two gold medals at London 2012 showed the potential of the cooperation, and new projects were soon in the pipeline: a complete ski sled for Andrea’s Winter Olympic challenge and an all-new handbike for the summer Games.

The first evolution of the handbike debuted at the 2019 World Championships in Emmen and later ran in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, while a revised version will take on the streets of Paris, after TGR-E fine-tuned the design based on Andrea’s experiences so far, and following process well established in its motorsport activities.

As well as bespoke bikes for Eskau, Toyota has also built ski sleds for her to compete in the Paralympic Winter Games. She’s also performed pretty well there, walking away with four silver medals and one bronze.

Andrea Eskau will compete at the Paris Paralympics later this week. Photo: Toyota

“Andrea was involved at every stage, not only providing detailed feedback but actually proposing concepts and solutions; it was a true partnership,” said Norbert Schäfer, parasports project manager at TGR-E, in a statement shared by Toyota.

“Both the ski sled and the hand bike projects were a privilege to be involved in, not only personally but as an organization. We learned a lot about this very specific world and had the honor of being part of Andrea’s incredible journey.”

It’ll be exciting to see if the refinement Toyota has made to the handcycle pay off and bring Eskau further Paralympic gold. If the evidence of the Paris Olympics is anything to go by, it could well do as Lotus’ involvement with Team GB’s track cyclists helped them collect more than eight Olympic medals a few weeks ago.

This year isn’t the first time motorsport has meddled in top-tier sports. In the 1990s, a team of experts from the world of NASCAR worked with the U.S. Olympic bobsled team to develop a new ride that helped them return to the Olympic podium.