2022 Toyota GR Yaris H2 completes World Rally Championship debut — UPDATE

UPDATE, 23 August 2022: A Toyota GR Yaris running with hydrogen instead of petrol to power its turbocharged three-cylinder engine has made a successful cameo on the Ypres Rally Belgium.

Four-time world rally champion Juha Kankkunen was set to drive the stages ahead of the Rally1 Hybrid cars that now compete for the world championship — including a version of the GR Yaris — but he shared the driving with Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota and a veteran motorsport competitor in both racing and rallying.

“We were able to let WRC fans hear the exhaust sound of a hydrogen engine,” Toyoda said in an official media statement.

“Motorsport is really a sport. I believe people get excited because sports stimulate our five senses, and that’s why I want to keep the engine's vibration and exhaust sound in motorsports.

“While we are trying to achieve carbon neutrality, we still want to keep the excitement. It was great that we were able to share that feeling in Europe.”

Our original story continues unchanged below.

18 August 2022: A 2022 Toyota GR Yaris running on hydrogen fuel will tackle the stages at the World Rally Championship in Belgium this weekend as the Japanese car giant steps up its development work on the future fuel.

It will be the public competition debut of the Toyota GR Yaris H2, although the car was previewed last year and its engine and fuel system are already fitted to a Toyota GR Corolla H2 that raced in Japan in June.

Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, was one of the drivers at the Fuji 24 Hours race and shared the Corolla H2 with Toyota Gazoo Racing's rally team principal, Jari-Matti Latvala.

It was the second time Toyota had competed in the 24-hour race with a hydrogen-fuelled Corolla, running in an alternate-energy class against rivals including a bio-fuel Mazda 2 and a Toyota GR86 and a Subaru BRZ both running on natural gas.

Unlike 'fuel cell' hydrogen vehicles which use the energy source to create electricity that powers an electric motor, the Toyota GR Yaris 1.6-litre turbo three-cylinder engine has been converted to run on hydrogen, via a special Denso injection system.

The car has four hydrogen tanks capable of holding 180 litres of the fuel.

The Toyota GR Corolla H2 finished last at Fuji, handicapped by its limited range and long refuelling times, but completed more than 450 laps of the 4.56-kilometre circuit.

The Toyota GR Yaris H2 for the WRC outing will only tackle a single stage on each day of the Ypres Rally with Kankkunen, a 63-year-old former Toyota factory rally driver who won the fourth of his world titles driving a Toyota Celica GT-Four in 1993.

It will run ahead of the competition field, which will be led by world championship leader Kalle Rovanpera driving a 2022 Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 Hybrid.

“I would love to have driven the car myself but with my focus on the rally, I’m looking forward to hear what Juha Kankkunen makes of driving a hydrogen-fuelled car,” said Latvalla in a Toyota media statement.