The great racing lie we’ve been told

Win on Sunday, sell on Monday no longer applies to modern motorsport.

We’ve been told this for years from people within the automotive industry, and while modern racing cars may have little in common with the cars that could drive from the showroom to victory lane decades ago, the reality is that it’s a lie.

Winning on Sunday is still very much connected to how many cars you sell on Monday. This applies to all motorsport, as evidenced by both Toyota and General Motors racing defunct models in Supercars for the brand cache, but one category stands out above the rest – GT3 sports cars.

The cars competing at the Bathurst 12-hour this weekend represented the race-bred versions of some of the finest road-going sports cars on the planet – Porsche 911 GT3, Ferrari 296 GTB, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Ford Mustang and more.

But in recent years, the success of GT3 racing around the world, with both factory-backed and privateer teams able to run races at Bathurst, Daytona, Le Mans and countless other circuits, has led to a surprising evolution.

The original premise for GT3 cars was to take an existing sports car and upgrade it for racing, but as the category has become more appealing a surprising evolution has occurred. Car brands are no longer converting their sports cars into GT3 race cars, they’re creating GT3 race cars and turning them into road cars.

They say ‘racing improves the breed’, well in the case of the new GR GT3 from Toyota, Mercedes-AMG’s new GT and Genesis’ teased Magma GT, these are purebred race cars that will simply be toned down for customers to drive on the road.

And this is brilliant news for performance cars fans. At a time when even car makers as massive as Toyota and BMW had to join forces to build a business case for the latest Supra and Z4 sports cars, this switch to combined racing/road car programs appears set to stimulate the flagging sports car market.

Building a purpose-built race car, which race teams will pay above road car rates is surely helping the numbers add up for these kinds of programs.

The new GR GT is perhaps the most extreme example of this concept yet, with the car not even officially referred to as either a ‘Toyota’ or ‘Lexus’ but rather a stand-alone model of the Gazoo Racing ‘GR’ performance and racing sub-brand.

Both the GR GT and GT3 variants have been developed at the same time, which has clearly influenced the layout and styling of the road car in order to make the most competitive racing car.

“The GR GT and its racecar sibling, the GR GT3, will be joined by the new Lexus LFA Concept here to form the sports car apex for both Lexus and GR,” explained Simon Humphries, Toyota’s Operating Officer and Chief Branding Officer.

“All from one race-bred platform, true to GR’s promise of pushing the limits for better, contributing to the entire Toyota Group.

“And all are part of Akio [Toyoda]’s promise of no more boring cars.”

This tactic has clearly inspired Toyota’s colleagues at Hyundai, where they are now plotting to not only enter the World Endurance Championship Hypercar class in 2026, but are aiming to build a GT3 customer racing program around a purpose-built sports car.

Previewed as the Magma GT Concept, this mid-engine two-door would be designed primarily around ensuring a competitive racing model, with the road car a spin-off from that in order to meet the regulations.

“Genesis, Magma and Genesis Magma Racing – GMR. These are three assets which will play a very synergistic role to enhance each other,” said Mike Song, Global Head of Genesis, at the reveal of the Magma GT Concept late in 2025.

“Not only for Genesis, or only for Magma, or only for GMR – it’s all together. When these work together closely, then we may have some very good lessons learned from GMR into Magma. Then Magma would affect standard Genesis products. And with the standard Genesis, we may find new ways to delight our customers.”

The net result of this focus for car manufacturers to ‘win on Sunday’ is that performance car fans will be the ones that ‘win on Monday’ with more choice from more brands in the near-future.