All the talk in Formula One this season has centred on the trials and tribulations currently being visited on Ferrari. Little wonder. The collapse of the Scuderia's dominance has been spectacular, and only Michael Schumacher's stunning drive to second in Imola has stemmed the tide of criticism threatening to engulf the once all-powerful marque.
But while Ferrari's slide from their previously god-like status towards prosaic humanity has exercised most of the minds inside the paddock, the progress made by everyone else against the champions has largely been ignored. And in the case of the great leap forward made by Toyota, ignorance is hardly blissful.
The Japanese company needs the wider world to recognise that it is suddenly ducking it out at the head of the pack. Four years ago, Toyota announced its intention to tilt at the F1 championship in a blaze of publicity. A massive headquarters would be built in Cologne, a huge multinational workforce would be hired to build an F1 challenger, wind tunnels would be built, dynos worked 24/7, the team even leased the Paul Ricard circuit from Bernie Ecclestone so it would have an almost private test facility. Toyota were in, and in a major way.
Three seasons later, the hoopla had died down. Toyota was reduced to quietly trawling for scraps at the back of the grid, a billion having been squandered on their F1 programme with little to show. So little that the team's best result was a fifth-place finish for Olivier Panis at the German Grand Prix of 2003.
Their best championship position? Eighth in the same year, with 16 points. Sixteen points compared with Ferrari's 158. Even fourth-placed Renault managed more than five times as many.
This, after the word had the previous season come from Japan that podiums were to be achieved, a first victory taken. Heads would roll unless fortunes improved. The pundits expected the bloodletting to be severe. Instead Cologne rallied, defied logic and four races into this season Toyota lie second in the championship on 27 points, three ahead of McLaren.
So where did it come from? How have Formula One's great spendthrifts gone from being wasteful losers to canny almost winners? The answers seems to be in three areas: drivers, car and regulations.
First, and most obviously, is the driver pairing. Having been saddled since the start of its campaign with solid if unspectacular drivers ranging from Mika Salo to Panis to the ill-fated and frankly ill-equipped De Matta, Toyota 2005 went for broke, bringing out the chequebook and the bringing in some racing talent.
Some might say they have opted for two of Formula One"s more difficult drivers but the pairing of the often petulant but occasionally potent Ralf Schumacher and the fragile but supremely fast Jarno Trulli is working.
Both had perhaps expected something less than thrilling when they joined, but it is obvious both have been pleasantly surprised and the pair of delicate egos involved have been boosted by the competitiveness of the car they have at their disposal.
The team, too, are happy. In pre-season team boss John Howett admitted that neither Trulli nor Schumacher came with the baggage most commonly associated with them. "Ralf came with a fairly heavy health warning from a few people," he said. "But we've found him to be nothing like the difficult character he's often portrayed as. Jarno works really well with the team too. They've done everything we've asked of them."
Then there is the car. It is a huge improvement on everything that has gone before, and most of the credit must go to technical director Mike Gascoyne. The former Jordan and Renault man is known as "The Rottweiler" for his take-no-prisoners approach, but it is his skills as an organiser and team-builder that have won him a reputed $4 million (about €3.1 million) contract with Toyota.
He says, though, that much of this year's improvement is down to two aspects - the rubber and the regulations. "We have understood how the car works with the Michelin tyres," he said of a team with a previously unshakeable reputation for building cars that devoured rear tyres. "We just have to ensure that our tyre choice for each race is correct, which was perhaps not the case in Melbourne, but if we can do that I do not see why we can't perform at the same level throughout the season."
But more even than that was the shake up in the rules governing the sport in the off-season. One set of tyres for the whole race, two-race engines, a raft of aerodynamic changes and technical tweaks all played into the hands of Ferrari's rivals, particularly Toyota.
All of that leads to the certain belief that in the current climate Toyota can win races. "A lot of people are saying 'Can you win a race?' Well, why not?" said Gascoyne recently. "We've finished the last two races behind Fernando Alonso. If he'd retired, we'd have won both. Ferrari will come up and win races, for sure. McLaren will probably win a race or two. But if they win a race, Toyota will probably win two or three."
It hasn't all been plain sailing, however. Imola was not kind to the team with Ralf Schumacher being docked 25 seconds for an infringement, which cost him a point, and Trulli only scraping into seventh place.
Barcelona, another medium-high downforce circuit is predicted to be equally tough.
But the team has tricks up its sleeve. Engine guru Luca Marmorini will bring a new powerplant evolution and Gascoyne expects a host of aerodynamic improvements to arrive as well.
It all bodes well for a crack at the championship believes Gascoyne. "We outscored Renault in Bahrain thanks to our 100 per cent reliability, while they lost a car to an engine failure. On that basis, we have the opportunity to fight for the Constructors' Championship this year."