{"id":576030,"date":"2026-08-21T16:28:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T16:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576030\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T16:28:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T16:28:25","slug":"toyota-supercars-project-spearhead-scores-mind-blowing-supra-laps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576030\/","title":{"rendered":"Toyota Supercars project spearhead scores ‘mind blowing’ Supra laps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Toyota\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSean Hanley is greeted by Neil Crompton after his hot laps. Image: Pace Images <\/p>\n

Sean Hanley strapped into Brad Jones Racing\u2019s #8 R&J Batteries Supra alongside Andre Heimgartner during the post-practice ride session.<\/p>\n

Hanley was vice president of sales and marketing at Toyota until this year, when he moved into a senior executive advisor role.<\/p>\n

The larger than life character had been critical to Toyota giving Supercars the green light and was initially the public face of its entry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never, ever experienced anything so fast,\u201d he said after climbing from the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best part was coming up to the corners and thinking \u2018my god, is he going to slow down?\u2019 And he did.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just masterful driving. I\u2019ve watched this sport all my life but until you\u2019re in there you don\u2019t understand how skilful and how great it is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sean Hanley with Andre Heigmartner. Image: Pace Images<\/p>\n

\u201cTo think they have to do that for hours and hours, it\u2019s mind blowing. It was unbelievably skilful and exhilarating.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only real issues I had were getting in and then getting out!\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Hanley is no longer the public face of the Toyota Supercars program, he has appeared trackside at several events.<\/p>\n

This weekend marks another milestone for Toyota with the rollout of an engine upgrade aimed at fixing reliability issues.<\/p>\n

Walkinshaw TWG driver Chaz Mostert was the fastest Toyota driver in practice, clocking third fastest behind Ford pair Brodie Kostecki and Broc Feeney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Hanley is greeted by Neil Crompton after his hot laps. Image: Pace Images Sean Hanley strapped into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[39415,17819,111,139,69,283658,213,74547],"class_list":["post-576030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-andre-heimgartner","tag-brad-jones-racing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sean-hanley","tag-sports","tag-toyota-supra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}