The WEC cannot go on like this

So, Toyota didn't win the Silverstone 6 Hours. But the disqualification of the two TS050 HYBRIDs and the Japanese manufacturer's decision not to pursue an appeal doesn't change the conclusions that have to be drawn from a race that it utterly dominated.

The most obvious one is that the WEC, in its hour of need, can't go on like this. And it's probably up to Toyota to do something about it.

What it surely must do is to agree to allow the TS050 to be slowed down. The pre-Silverstone rule changes in favour of the LMP1 privateers appeared to make little or no difference to the gap between them and the cars from the one remaining factory team left in the WEC.

They were left trailing in the wake of the Toyotas to the tune of four laps last weekend. It's irrelevant that a privateer Rebellion-Gibson R-13 will go down in the record books as the race winner and that the names Thomas Laurent, Gustavo Menezes and Mathias Beche will be engraved on the majestic Tourist Trophy alongside those of Tazio Nuvolari and Stirling Moss.

On the evidence of Silverstone, it's difficult to see how any further changes under the Equivalence of Technology, the mechanism under which the changes for last weekend's event were made, can remotely bring the independents into the ballpark and deliver on the WEC's promise of lap-time parity between the hybrid and non-hybrid runners.

There's only so much fuel you can give to the privateers, though, as they are already at the 115kg per hour maximum flow rate agreed ahead of the season. And there is only so much weight that can be taken out of the cars. It's probably next to nothing, especially for the turbocharged contenders.

The laws of physics dictate that more fuel doesn't turn into a commensurate lap time gain, points out Gaetan Jego, technical director of the ART Grand Prix-run SMP Racing squad.

"We can't just be given more and more fuel, because we can't exploit it," he says. "We will run into reliability issues and tyre issues."

The non-hybrid independent cars put their power down exclusively through the rear wheels, remember.

"The tyres that we use are built for a Toyota," says 2009 Formula 1 world champion and SMP driver Jenson Button. "So we overheat the rears and we never get the fronts working because the fronts are built to be driven by power. The fronts are as wide as the rears, so for balance as well for us it's really tricky, because that front tyre is so wide. So we get a lot of pick-up on the front tyre. So, yeah, everything works against the privateer."

Amid all the talk of the EoT and the efforts to get the indies onto something approaching a par with the hybrid cars, it is easy to forget that Toyota hasn't been slowed since last season. The only concession the manufacturer made on the overall performance of its cars for this campaign was to accept a shorter length of stint between refuelling stops.

Toyota has rightly been protective of its position - and long-running investment in the LMP1 programme. That explains why it negotiated a 0.25% margin in its favour when the original EoT was being formulated against the backdrop of the WEC's commitment to giving the privateers lap-time parity last autumn following Porsche's withdrawal from LMP1.

The WEC, in its hour of need, can't go on like this. And it's probably up to Toyota to do something about it

Only once Toyota had wrapped up its first victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours and seen that the independents were nowhere near the 0.25%, or the magic half second around the Circuit de la Sarthe, did it agree to removing what has turned out to be a highly notional gap.

It is so notional that the best of the privateers were more than two seconds a lap down on the Toyotas on the averages around the 3.67-mile Silverstone Grand Prix circuit.

The privateers can edge closer under the current EoT, I'm sure. It's fair to say that they didn't get the most out of their packages at Silverstone.

Rebellion driver Neel Jani, who ultimately ended up second together with Andre Lotterer behind their team-mates, reckoned there's "still a lot of work to do" on the team's eponymous Gibson-powered machine. The R-13 was an inconsistent car on its debut in high-downforce trim at Silverstone.

But two seconds is a country mile by any other name and a gap that cannot be closed by a bit of fuel here and a bit of weight lost there. Parity, or something approaching it, remains a long way off.

Toyota had FIA stability rules on its side when it came to the complex negotiations on the EoT ahead of the start of the 2018/19 WEC, the so-called superseason that includes two editions of Le Mans. Technical rule changes need to be in place two Januarys before they come into force, though no one can tell me how the switch to the winter season format for 2019/20 will affect that.

Is it right that the Toyota should be slowed down to bring the privateers into the equation? The Japanese marque has done the job you might expect of a well-funded manufacturer and produced the most from the rulebook. The privateers, according to the simulations of the rulemakers - and Toyota - have not, despite racing to a separate set of rules packed full of breaks to their advantage.

So, no, it's not right in the normal way of the world, one in which privateers beating factories or even racing on roughly equal terms with them is the exception. But these aren't normal times for the WEC. The term interim season doesn't do the 2018/19 WEC justice. A better term might be 'survival season', because the championship needs to get through it and the one that follows with the LMP1 grid intact and healthy.

New rules for the championship's premier class, dubbed the hypercar concept, are due to come into force for the 2020/21 WEC season and no one is pushing for them harder than Toyota. That means it has a vested interest in the LMP1 category and its survival through the superseason and the one after.

But can LMP1 survive a season, or perhaps even two, of runaway wins by Toyota? What will happen to the spectators who show up at the circuits, the fans who tune in their TVs and, just as pertinently, the privateers in the class? Should Toyota keep on winning as it pleases, will the likes of Rebellion and SMP want to hang around to continually have sand thrown in their faces?

Privateers are paramount to the future of the premier class in the WEC, both now, next season and when the new regulations come into force. The hypercar rules are being framed so that the independents can compete with the factories without the breaks they get now. It will be a brave new world for the WEC, so it's important not to discourage them before we even get there.

The majority of the privateers racing in the superseason were encouraged into the LMP1 arena by rule changes designed to bring them closer to the front of the field.

SMP, with its Dallara-built BR Engineering BR1, signed up for the top category after a series of aerodynamic rule changes introduced for the 2017 season. Rebellion, the top privateer in the short history of the born-again WEC, came back to its old stomping ground after a successful sabbatical in LMP2, precisely because of the promise that it could be competitive in the higher class against Toyota.

"They have to be slowed down. The only thing that can happen now is for Toyota to throw the anchors out" Bart Hayden, Rebellion team principal

But then the question some of the privateers are asking of Toyota is whether they want to continue racing themselves for victory?

"If I were Toyota I wouldn't be happy with a race between my two cars," reckons Jego. "The racing isn't very nice. They have to agree to losing performance to balance the field. That's the only way."

Bart Hayden, Rebellion team principal, agrees.

"They have to be slowed down," he says. "The only thing that can happen now is for Toyota to throw the anchors out."