The past lessons Toyota must heed in the WRC title race

In every discipline of motorsport, a successful team needs a star performer around whom everyone flits like pilot fish accompanying a great white shark - and that includes their team-mates.

Sporting purity is a lofty ambition, but drivers who take points off each other are bad for business. Michael Schumacher needed an Eddie Irvine or Rubens Barrichello alongside him in Ferrari's F1 pomp, just as Sebastien Loeb's WRC dominance for Citroen owed much to the work of Dani Sordo.

When Toyota's team boss Tommi Makinen assembled his all-new squad for 2020, six-time world champion Sebastien Ogier was drafted in as the natural leader for as long as it took the mind-bending talent of Kalle Rovanpera to mature.

A British driver is also of high importance at Toyota, where large numbers of its cars are both assembled and sold. With only Elfyn Evans or Kris Meeke to choose from, Makinen played play safe with Evans, who had given Ogier valuable support at M-Sport in 2017 and 2018.

It is therefore safe to say that in this topsy-turvy, COVID-blasted season, there was little in Toyota's original game plan that would have factored in the Welshman standing atop the points table with two rallies remaining. And certainly not with a healthy 18-point cushion to Ogier in second after engine failure in Turkey put the Frenchman out, while simultaneously opening the door for Evans to win.

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Both of Hyundai's drivers, Ott Tanak (27 points behind Evans) and Thierry Neuville (32 points), are also in with a shout of the title. So too is Rovanpera (27 points), and there is a hair's breadth between Toyota and Hyundai in the manufacturers' standings, with Toyota resting on a nine-point advantage.

This begs the intriguing - to many unthinkable - question of whether Ogier will now be asked to take the role of understudy. We seldom get the chance to see how teams react in this situation, but it is always memorable.

One such occasion came in 1982, when it seemed that Audi's revolutionary Quattro, after a year of development, gave team leader Hannu Mikkola one hand on the title even before turning a wheel.

As it turned out, Mikkola scored just one second place in the first eight rallies of the season, crashing out four times and suffering two mechanical retirements. With the Quattro still a delicate flower next to the simpler rear-drive saloons of Opel, Toyota and Datsun, Audi Sport also elected to miss the Safari.

Meanwhile the team's number two, Michele Mouton, won in Portugal, Greece and Brazil, whilst salvaging a fifth in Sweden despite crashing into Mikkola's stranded car. Her natural environment was asphalt and despite the heavy, understeering Quattro's lack of a handbrake, she brought home four points in Corsica, the Quattro's bogey event.

Most histories will tell you that the 1982 world championship was lost when Mouton crashed out within sight of victory on the penultimate round, the Ivory Coast. In reality her team had dropped the ball long before

With four rounds remaining, only Mouton could hope to catch points leader Walter Rohrl and the 1,000 Lakes came next - perfect Audi territory.

To cement its advantage, Audi welcomed back Stig Blomqvist, who had won the Swedish Rally and since then dominated regional Scandinavian events. His Quattro was also fitted with Michelin tyres that proved far superior to the Klebers fitted to the works cars.

Indeed, some of this much-improved rubber was 'inadvertently' fitted by the works team in remote services - but in a clear case of shooting themselves in the foot, the Michelins went onto Mikkola's car.

An enraged Mouton therefore went flat-out through Finland, matching Blomqvist's stage times until she pushed things a little too far on the third day. Her Quattro only suffered light damage but Mouton stalked off into the woods with a 'sod the lot of you' demeanour. Blomqvist was then ordered to slow for Mikkola to win unchallenged.

Sanremo came next and Audi brought a fleet of six cars, which proved a logistical nightmare from which Mouton emerged in fourth place while Blomqvist took the win.

Most histories will tell you that the 1982 world championship was lost when Mouton crashed out within sight of victory on the penultimate round, the Ivory Coast. In reality her team had dropped the ball long before. From 1983 onwards, Audi would designate a number one driver for the season.

In 1984, the Quattro's dominance was laid waste by the Peugeot 205 Turbo 16. Team leader Ari Vatanen won five times in a row through late 1984 and early 1985, by which time he was supported by Timo Salonen: a reliable veteran of marathon events.

The chain-smoking, rotund Salonen was initially some way off his more athletic team-mate's pace, yet with a change in the geometry and a whiff of power steering available in Portugal, Salonen took off and Vatanen crashed out in his pursuit.

On the Safari, Salonen coaxed his disintegrating 205 to the finish and got four more points than Vatanen. In Corsica, Vatanen crashed out in truly terrifying style but Salonen was also waylaid by electrical problems.

Next came the Acropolis and another Salonen victory while Vatanen's steering broke. Salonen led home a Peugeot 1-2 in New Zealand by 77 seconds, building a 33-point cushion over his notional leader with five rallies remaining.

Their battle ended violently in Argentina, where Vatanen's luck ran out entirely as he sought to reassert himself. The mantle of team leader passed wholly to Salonen, who would duly deliver Jean Todt's team its first clean sweep of world championship titles.

Since then we have seen Juha Kankkunen defy Lancia's preference for an Italian world champion in 1987, and Colin McRae memorably usurp Carlos Sainz to claim the 1995 title. In the quarter of a century thereafter, though, the status quo has been maintained. Now it is under threat.

Evans's softly-softly approach has netted only 11 stage wins to Ogier's 15 (and Neuville's 26) but that is still enough to bring two victories and with them an enviable championship lead. The question now is how Toyota and Ogier will respond in Sardinia and Belgium - and whether they can endure the oncoming storm from Hyundai...