Twelve months ago, if you’d have asked anyone how Toyota would fare in its first year back in the World Rally Championship since 1999, they would have written it off as a learning year.
The car was pulled together in less than 10 months and the hastily formed team had weathered a veritable storm of criticism during the off-season. Expectations for the motorsport giant were low.
The podium at Monte Carlo could be brushed off as a stroke of luck in an unpredictable and topsy-turvey rally. But come Jari-Matti Latvala’s win in Sweden, it was hard to deny that Toyota had pulled off what the paddock had thought impossible. A win for Esapekka Lappi in Finland, only the fourth rally of his WRC career, proved that the shambles at the end of 2016 had disguised the preparations of a team that was here to win.
And so to the present. Juho Hanninen is gone, his seat filled by M-Sport’s Ott Tanak. The Estonian upped his game in 2017 with Sebastien Ogier as his team-mate and could be just the man to take Toyota to a championship victory. Aided and abetted by a resurgent Latvala and rising- star Lappi, Toyota has the line-up to take it to the big boys.
Tanak left M-Sport because he wanted a shot at the championship and that wasn’t something he thought he could achieve as a number two to Ogier. He feels Toyota is his best option to get into a championship fight. He’s not messing around; he’s bided his time, but now is his moment to strike. At Toyota, he can move out of the champion’s shadow and prove himself a worthy contender for the title. Toyota’s considerable resources also haven’t have gone unnoticed by Tanak. They have the potential to move forward and fast.
The team has got Tommi Makinen at the helm and if 2017 was anything to go by then the four times WRC champion certainly seems to know what he’s doing. Consistency is top of his agenda; if they can perform at their best at more of the rallies and avoid slipping back towards the end of the year then the results will speak for themselves. And with three cars right from the outset, Toyota is in a far better position for maintaining a steady income of points right the way through the year.
What Toyota achieved in 2017 was unexpected and exciting and cheering for the WRC. They gave rally fans reasons to be hopeful that they will be challenging for championships in the near future. Who knows if Toyota actually can build on their promising start and give Tanak what he needs to fight at the front. Everybody was spectacularly wrong this time last year. But we do know that they have they have the resources, three champions-in-the-making and the fighting spirit to be victorious.
