How Toyota the underdog shocked the WRC

Seven world titles and some of the world's best rally cars. That's Toyota. Banned for cheating and co-drivers throwing crash helmets at its cars. That's also Toyota. How will the next chapter in the Japanese manufacturer's World Rally Championship history be written?

The prologue didn't look good, did it? In fact, it couldn't have looked worse. For a while last season it seemed a week wouldn't go by without reports of yet another drama, more staff leaving, more unrest, more grief and less progress.

And from the moment the Yaris WRC took to the stages to start testing, it became almost compulsory to castigate and criticise.

In all honesty, Tommi Makinen was an easy target. What did he know about running and managing a frontline WRC team? How could prepping a few Group N Subarus qualify him to take on the world?

And then there was Tommi's place out in the sticks, mid-Finland. Before work could commence on Toyota's all-new World Rally Car, it seems a creche had to be cleared from the corner of the building.

Puuppola simply didn't, simply couldn't, stack up against Toyota Motorsport's Cologne facility - you know the one, packed with windtunnels and the latest tech for chassis and engine development.

What was even more bizarre was the TMG development Yaris WRC being laid to waste after months and months of testing and hard work.

Makinen was unmoved. Disparaging comments came and went, but he and his team kept their heads down and pressed on. Tommi was doing this his way.

Or he was doing it the way he and Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda wanted it doing. Early in the project, Makinen's matey relationship with the man at the top of the world's biggest carmaker was scoffed at: a couple of high-enders playing out their rally fantasy.

How insulting. What's more, how very, very wide of the mark.

What Makinen's team did in 10 months is astonishing. Building a team and a car in the fashion they did eclipses anything we've seen in rallying for a very long time.

Nobody saw this coming.

Let's face it, Jari-Matti Latvala's second place on the Monte Carlo Rally was a fluke. But Sweden? That win was utterly deserved.

In Sweden, the Yaris showed itself as a very, very fast World Rally Car. What's more, it didn't miss a beat. And the reliability aspect was, perhaps, even more impressive. That speed just kept on coming.

The pre-season prediction was this year would be one for Toyota to spend learning, in the same way Hyundai did with its i20 WRC in 2014. Genuinely, nobody gave the Yaris a hope.

So, what changed?

One of the things that comes across from being around the team is the spirit that runs through it now. Yes, there was disharmony in the early days, but the squad in place now is strong and cohesive.

"We are together in this," Makinen tells me, leaning in to emphasise. "If something goes wrong, we don't walk around looking for somebody to blame. We work together."

And, now, win together.

And that togetherness is something the last men into the team have really brought in to. Latvala and his co-driver Miikka Anttila were the final piece of the jigsaw. They were the ones to complete the picture.

Isn't that incredible? Who would have thought those broken, lost, down-if-not-out Finns would be the ones to light the touch paper?

What's more, how could they ever flourish at Toyota when they'd failed at what was clearly considered the rallying nirvana that was Volkswagen Motorsport?

They couldn't. They were doomed. And so was Toyota.

They could. And they did.

Many feared how Latvala would react badly to the sort of direct approach Makinen might take with his drivers, but it's worked a treat.

Latvala reasons: "The difference between Jost [Capito, former team principal at VW] and Tommi is that Tommi was driving not so long ago and as a rally driver he has won [the title] four times.

"He knows exactly what goes through your mind when you are fighting for the victory or when you are frustrated. He has been able to jump in my shoes and help me get my feeling."

Latvala needs a leader he can believe in. We know how well he and Mikko Hirvonen got on at Ford, but I remember when Petter Solberg joined the Blue Oval in 2012. Latvala really leaned on the '03 world champion. And Solberg gave him everything without question.

After that, arriving at VW came as a shock to Latvala's system. Sure, the engineers and everybody shared all the information, but there was nothing like the bond with Sebastien Ogier that Jari-Matti had enjoyed with his other team-mates.

Between the stages, in the service park, Ogier was fine and a great colleague. But when the lights went green, the Frenchman wanted to crush the Finn in the same way he wanted to crush everybody else. It's what world champions do.

Latvala lost himself and came close to losing everything in an ultimately fruitless pursuit of Ogier. When he couldn't beat him, he tried to copy him and when he couldn't copy him, he started to beat himself up.

Nobody could ever say he lacked support from Volkswagen, but what he needed was a driver in the team he could look up to. Plainly, Latvala's found that support in Makinen.

Four-time champion Makinen is starting to talk about Latvala as a title threat this year and who are we to argue? Never has Latvala looked stronger than he did when he dominated that Torsby powerstage last Sunday.

There will be dips this year. Mexico, for example, could be a struggle. The Yaris has completed plenty of high altitude miles in testing and it's certainly not short of hot weather testing, but there's been precious little hot weather work completed at high altitude...

But what's clear is that Latvala and the Toyota are on the same wavelength. By his own admission, Latvala needed to effect some late specification changes to the transmission, but he got there in time. In his first two weeks in his new job, he turned might have been an also-ran into a winner.

And that's what's electrified the start to this season for Toyota. Without Volkswagen's departure, Toyota's Yaris would not have had a set-up born out of the experience of a driver with 171 world championship starts.

It would have started with Juho Hanninen and Esapekka Lappi, both quick and very worthy Finns. But it wouldn't have been celebrating so long and hard on a Swedish Sunday.

Watching Latvala celebrating in Torsby, there was an obvious question of why Ogier had passed this chance over. And Kris Meeke six months earlier.

I stopped one of the black-jacketed Toyota employees dancing for long enough to put that question to him.

"You want to know what changed the car from when Ogier drove it?" he questions rhetorically. Before I can answer, he looks back to the champagne-soaked souls on the podium's top step.

"You're looking at them."

Toyota's future in the World Rally Championship is very bright right now. But what's sensible for the balance of 2017? Do we dare think about titles?

It would be foolhardy to rule the man leading the title race out, even if we're only two rounds in. But Thierry Neuville and Hyundai are looking very, very strong. The Belgian had rounds one and two in the palm of his hand and, at some point, he's going to stop dropping them and start winning some rallies.

And then there's M-Sport's Ogier and Ott Tanak. We all know what Sebastien's capable of - and a fifth straight title is very much within his grasp this year - but Tanak's speed in Sweden showed the champ could be in for the biggest internal fight since his days alongside the other Seb at Citroen.

Talking of Citroen... Actually, let's leave that one. This is Toyota's and Tommi's moment.