Toyota should have won the Le Mans 24 Hours last year and it somehow managed to take the battle for the World Endurance Championship drivers' title down to the wire in Bahrain.
Yet in reality it wasn't a consistent challenger for race victories in 2016. This year could be different in the post-Audi LMP1 era, as Toyota bids to prevent Porsche sweeping to a hat-trick of Le Mans victories and WEC titles.
Logic suggests that Toyota should have made a bigger step than its only rival at the front of the WEC field. It must have had more to gain from the TS050 HYBRID package that's going into its second season than Porsche has had with the three-year-old second-generation 919 Hybrid, which in turn was a redesign of the 2014 original. What's more, new rules for 2017 could have played into Toyota's hands.