Does the WRC need 'new VW' to fail in 2018?

There's a man standing opposite me; he's shouting at me. He wasn't. But he is now. A cleaned-up, family-friendly precis of his argument goes something like this: You know as much about the World Rally Championship as Donald Trump knows about globalisation and international relations.

My brother-in-law is a dyed-in-the-wool rally fan. He refuses to drive anything other than a Ford and laughs in the face of folk who fail to recognise the RS1800 as anything other than God's own motor. Given that Clive is a six-and-a-half-foot second-rower, people soon come around to his way of thinking.

Not me. Not this time.

The last year of the WRC was just about the best since 2001. We agree on that much, with his caveat that I accepted Ari Vatanen's 1981 success overshadowed everything except Bjorn Waldegaard's title of two years earlier (they were both in Escorts). It's the future that's been causing us the trouble.

"For Volkswagen, read Hyundai next year then," he'd ventured about an hour earlier.

What?

"Hyundai, with [Thierry] Neuville, [Andreas] Mikkelsen and two more great drivers squabbling over one seat, how can they lose? I'm telling you, the WRC's a Korean benefit this year."

And so it began. In very short order family, friends and even total strangers started to shift their chairs a bit further away. Annoyingly, despite the onset of another couple of pints, his argument appeared to be getting stronger and more compelling.

Who set the most fastest stage times? Yes, yes, Neuville. We all know that. Who led for the most stages? Same. Who won the most rallies? Thierry.

I countered: which team suffered the most mechanical issues last season? Granted, I couldn't quantify this with precise data, but mixing a few turbo troubles, power steering issues and electrical gremlins with the offer of another London Pride silenced him momentarily.

Does Hyundai enjoy the biggest budget in the service park? Undoubtedly there's more cash around than there is at Citroen or M-Sport Ford, but I'd wager Toyota isn't short of a bob or two as well. What I couldn't dispute was the dynamism with which Michel Nandan's Alzenau-based Hyundai WRC outfit works. No sooner has a development part made its way from Bertrand Vallat's brain to his CAD terminal than it's been evolved, produced and put on a plane from Seoul to Frankfurt.

The Korean gameplan is simple: "If we can do it tomorrow, let's do it today, and if we're doing it today, why didn't we do it yesterday?"

That's not necessarily always a good thing. The original i20 WRC was a bit of a donkey that should have done the miles as a test and development mule and nothing more. Two years later, the New Generation i20 WRC that followed was a proper piece of kit and a machine worthy of the world's third biggest carmaker.

What made Hyundai's 2016 World Rally Car even more handy was that it laid the foundations for last year's i20 Coupe WRC. M-Sport, Toyota and Citroen brought pretty much brand new cars to the party last year, while Hyundai carried over a number of parts that had already been through a season of competition - the best possible test and development process.

Across the spread of the season, it's impossible to argue against the Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC being the quickest car. It might have struggled to match the Fiesta in places, the Citroen on asphalt or the Yaris in Finland, but in terms of the bigger picture, Hyundai got it right.

Hyundai does have the potential to dominate in the same fashion Volkswagen did between 2013 and 2016. Then again, we shouldn't forget the others...

But what let the i20 Coupe WRC down was a degree of fragility in suspension and steering components. They've been beefed up for the year ahead, but at what cost in terms of performance? Keep your eyes peeled for the first stretch of dry asphalt in the French Alps next week; if everybody's on the same tyres, we'll have a very good idea of whether the Hyundai is right at the races or not. I suspect it will be.

Clive's point about the drivers is understandable. Neuville and Mikkelsen are at the top of their game right now. The cocksure Belgian is properly on it. He finished last season with a sensational win in Australia and was the class of the field pretty much all year.

Except in Finland, after Sebastien Ogier had crashed and left Neuville with an open goal, which he duly missed. But still, Neuville's foundation of four wins should have been enough for Hyundai to seal a maiden manufacturers' title.

"We were clearly missing a team-mate to help us in the fight for the championship," Neuville says. "For 90% of the year, I was alone fighting when [M-Sport had] two, three Fiestas always on the podium. Nobody really joined us in that fight except for on two rallies. That makes my fight for the drivers' title even harder, and for the manufacturers' title, it makes it impossible."

Much as I'm a fan of Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo, it's hard to argue. Paddon in particular struggled to find his feet in a car that was more suited to the nosey rather than taily style of his team-mates. Mikkelsen jumped into the i20 Coupe WRC three rounds from the end of last year, led two of them and immediately felt comfortable.

"It feels just like the Polo," he says, "and I loved that car..."

And what happened last time he was in a Polo? Oh yeah, he beat Ogier in a fair, final-day fight on Volkswagen's last outing in Australia at the end of 2016. Make no mistake, Mikkelsen's ready for this season.

Right now, Hyundai's chosen ones are talking the talk about the need for the manufacturers' title and the requirement to satisfy Seoul with a tangible year-long return on its WRC investment. And this time Sordo and Paddon ought to be more valuable. Sordo remains one of the fastest drivers around on asphalt and one of the most consistent points-scorers when it comes to the dirt. In his last three full seasons and 39 rallies with Hyundai, he only finished outside the points five times.

The good thing for Hyundai is that Sordo and Paddon are still feeling sufficiently aggrieved at their demotion that each is looking to demonstrate to the team's management just how badly they've been misjudged. Perfect. For different reasons, Hyundai arrives at the start of the season with four of the series' most motivated crews.

Hang on, it sounds like I'm convinced. Hyundai does have the potential to dominate in the same fashion Volkswagen did between 2013 and '16.

Then again, we shouldn't forget the others...

The defending champions

For all that talk about Mikkelsen and Neuville having everything going for them, ask either of them who's the one to watch this year and they'll give you the same answer. It's Ogier.

Last year the defending champion was up against it in a new car and with a new team, but he rose to the challenge and ticked off title number five. In doing so, he demonstrated patience to match the pace we'd always known about.

Consistency was the key for Ogier last season and it's going to be the same again this time around.

"This year will be tough, but that's the way we like it - the competition is why we are here," says Ogier. "Everybody is waiting for us and everybody has a strong car. Last year we won two rallies, the target for this year is to do more than that, but if you tell me I can win the championship again by winning only two rallies then I will sign for this straight away."

Ogier has started 123 rounds of the world championship, 59 short of Jari-Matti Latvala, the most experienced driver in the field. But nobody starting the 2018 season has won half as many events as the champ: Ogier is on 40, Latvala is next up on 17.

So, Ogier can retain his title, but what about M-Sport? The loss of Ott Tanak will hit hard. You don't say goodbye to a two-time world rally winner and not feel some pain. But Elfyn Evans is a more than satisfactory replacement. His improvement through last year was quite remarkable and he starts the new season in the best possible position, with a car he knows and loves beneath him and the same tyres as everybody else.

The call for more power from the Fiesta is something M-Sport's Chris Williams has been working on since the middle of last year, and the car starts Monte with significant engine improvements. Asked to quantify that, Williams avoids quoting numbers and goes for a broader description. "It's a chunk," he says, "a good chunk."

Elsewhere on the #1 car, M-Sport has deployed homologation jokers on the bodywork (sills and rear quarter), on differential tweaks and on more durable wishbones.

The no-longer-new manufacturer

This year's WRC will be a thriller with no end of intriguing subplots, one of which is the question mark over Toyota's ability to keep three charging drivers happy.

Last year Toyota's order was well set. Latvala arrived late, but took the seat at the head of the table without any questions; 12 months ago Esapekka Lappi still hadn't started a world championship event in a World Rally Car and Juho Hanninen was more than happy to toe the party line in an effort to prolong the twilight of his career.

Now Lappi is a Rally Finland winner and Hanninen has been replaced by Tanak - a man who, with a bit more planning and event management early in 2017, could have been sticking the champion's #1 plates on his Yaris WRC this year.

This is Latvala's best chance to win the championship. I might have said that before and it might sound strange when you think this guy spent four years with Volkswagen and couldn't make it happen, but it's only since VW disappeared that we've discovered just how much of a struggle he found life alongside Ogier. Now he's got the experience and common sense to drive like a champion.

Toyota and its immediate pace provided the biggest surprise of last year. That speed was tempered by teething troubles on a car which had come together in a shockingly short space of time. Team boss Tommi Makinen reckons the thing is completely debugged and ready to go now. Certainly, prolonged high-altitude running at Toyota's engine factory in Japan has brought both performance and reliability gains - the overheating seen in Mexico and Argentina last year will be a thing of the past.

The hurt marque with something to prove

Talking of surprises, nothing shocked the service park more than Citroen's woeful showing at the dawn of the new era last year. Things have changed significantly since then.

From the outside this is the Citroen of old, but behind the scenes the budget is nothing like it was a decade ago. The expertise is, however, still there. If the Versailles team can capture the sort of pace it showed on 2017's asphalt and the rougher, tighter, twistier gravel stages and transfer it to the wider, smoother dirt roads, then the C3 WRC becomes a genuine threat all around the world.

Kris Meeke is a potential rally winner everywhere and Craig Breen is certainly going to be in the mix on some of his favoured rallies. And then there's the return of the king on three rounds. It's testament to the budget restrictions that Sebastien Loeb comes in to replace Breen in Mexico, Corsica and Spain.

Citroen will only run three cars when Mads Ostberg returns in Sweden or team partner Khalid Al Qassimi starts a handful of rallies later in the year. The upshot of this is a negligible challenge for the makes' crown, but genuine potential for wins and a shot at the drivers' championship.

And the upshot of all of this is that I'm right. And Clive's wrong.