Over the summer, Toyota Gazoo Racing will officially announce the creation of the all-new "GR Cup" racing series. It will be a single-make series, sort of like Lamborghini Super Trofeo, where the only cars allowed to race are Lamborghini Huracan models. Only instead of six-figure supercars, Toyota wants to take the far more affordable Toyota GR86 racing. The best part?

For once, we North Americans are getting something cool out of Japan (GR Corolla notwithstanding). The series will be held at tracks across the United States. And the racing in this series, typical of single-make race series, will be extremely close. Toyota says that drivers will use identical cars. Usually, that means that the only things differentiating the teams from one another will be the car's setups and the tires on which they currently sit.

Toyota believes (and rightly so) that this type of racing "puts a large emphasis on driver skill and car setup." But Toyota isn't just looking to go racing. The brand hopes to reap a myriad of benefits from the series as well. Of course, there's the financial aspect of all this. A popular race series highlighting the Toyota and Gazoo Racing brands is certainly a great marketing opportunity. "What races on Sunday, sells on Monday." Not that Toyota is having a problem moving GR86 units. Sales for that are up 326.3% for the quarter. It's also worth noting that the GR86's twin, the Subaru BRZ, has also seen some sales success. Perhaps those will be allowed to join the series.

Finances are well and good, but Toyota also hopes that their engineers will be able to learn from the series as well. Toyota plans to take the findings from the GR Cup series and apply them to their existing production cars. We already like the GR86 a lot, but seeing some improvements made based on learnings from the crucible of motorsport is no bad thing.

Then there's the benefit to those looking to go racing. Unlike Lambo's Super Trofeo series, this will be incredibly affordable in comparison. The cost difference between a production Huracan STO and a GR86 is simply massive, at around $300,000. We imagine the cost difference for the Cup cars to be similarly massive. Let's just hope Toyota makes the racing easy to watch from home. Often, small series like this isn't covered by larger sports media outlets like ESPN or Sky Sports. Hopefully, Toyota can change that, too.