Toyota has constructed some fairly unimaginable racers in its time. Vehicles just like the Toyota Celica ST185 triumphed in World Rally within the Nineteen Nineties and the TS050 Hybrid has grow to be a formidable Le Mans racer for the Toyota Gazoo Racing workforce. Now, the Japanese workforce has a new racer that’s prepared to beat the streets of Europe, and this time it’s a one-off creation that doesn’t create any emissions.
The brand new racer includes a carbon fiber body, a singular three-wheel setup and no engine at it’s coronary heart. There’s not even a hydrogen gas cell powering this factor because it’s as a substitute run on the arm energy of German Paralympian Andrea Eskau. In case you haven’t guessed but, this new machine isn’t a automobile. As a substitute, it’s a bespoke handcycle constructed with the only real goal of successful Paralympic gold medals on the 2024 Paris video games.
Eskau has been a formidable pressure in para-cycling for nearly 20 years, having gained gold medals on the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Paralympic Video games. Now, she’s heading to Paris in quest of extra medals with a motorsport-inspired handbike, designed and constructed by Toyota Gazoo Racing, stories Endurance Data.
The German athlete will compete within the highway biking competitors later this week with a handcycle that’s constructed round a carbon fiber tub the place Eskau will sit. On the rear, there are two wheels and the entrance is made up of a bigger wheel to steer and two paddles that Eskau will spin to maneuver her ahead. That is the beautiful normal setup for an Olympic handbike, however Eskau’s comes with a number of race-inspired upgrades courtesy of TGR, as Endurance Data explains:
TGR-E’s first undertaking with Andrea, to create an ergonomic seat insert in 2012, was the seed which grew right into a long-term partnership, fuelled by the fervour of an unimaginable athlete and TGR-E engineers eager to help her. Two gold medals at London 2012 confirmed the potential of the cooperation, and new initiatives have been quickly within the pipeline: a whole ski sled for Andrea’s Winter Olympic problem and an all-new handbike for the summer season Video games.
The primary evolution of the handbike debuted on the 2019 World Championships in Emmen and later ran within the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, whereas a revised model will tackle the streets of Paris, after TGR-E fine-tuned the design based mostly on Andrea’s experiences thus far, and following course of properly established in its motorsport actions.
In addition to bespoke bikes for Eskau, Toyota has additionally constructed ski sleds for her to compete within the Paralympic Winter Video games. She’s additionally carried out fairly properly there, strolling away with 4 silver medals and one bronze.
“Andrea was concerned at each stage, not solely offering detailed suggestions however truly proposing ideas and options; it was a real partnership,” stated Norbert Schäfer, parasports undertaking supervisor at TGR-E, in an announcement shared by Toyota.
“Each the ski sled and the hand bike initiatives have been a privilege to be concerned in, not solely personally however as a corporation. We discovered lots about this very particular world and had the distinction of being a part of Andrea’s unimaginable journey.”
It’ll be thrilling to see if the refinement Toyota has made to the handcycle repay and produce Eskau additional Paralympic gold. If the proof of the Paris Olympics is something to go by, it might properly do as Lotus’ involvement with Crew GB’s observe cyclists helped them acquire greater than eight Olympic medals a number of weeks in the past.
This yr isn’t the primary time motorsport has meddled in top-tier sports activities. Within the Nineteen Nineties, a workforce of specialists from the world of NASCAR labored with the U.S. Olympic bobsled workforce to develop a brand new trip that helped them return to the Olympic podium.
