Sorry, I'm not trying be rude or crap all over Toyota's motorsport past, but the fact of the matter is that they poured buckets of money into both F1 and Sportscar racing and didn't really achieve what they set out to achieve, in either discipline. I hope it's different this time around.
By comparison, Mazda with it's one-off success looks like a much more efficient and successful outfit.
I think that only highlights what is wrong with only looking at things simplistically, black and white, victories to no victories.
Funnily enough, Mazda meet pretty much the definition of "also-ran", perhaps even in 1991.
There is more to motorsport than simply winning. Yes its the primary goal of everyone involved to win. But its not the only way we can judge who is good and who isn't. I'd actually go as far as saying race wins only highlight a further need to quantify how good the wins themselves were - to decide whether it was simply luck or outright skill and ability that achieved the wins.
If we judged Audi on simple statistics - then we'd decide they are so dominant and unbeatable that why would anyone else bother? But looking a little closer you start to notice that most of those stats have been built up in an era when they really lacked genuine and fair competition. Lets be honest, the likes of Pescarolo were never going to get anywhere near Audi the budgets were so laughably different.
Thats not to say Audi aren't successful or that they aren't a seriously formidable opponent nor am I saying their wins mean nothing - of course winning so many times does mean something. Its just its not the only measure of success and that a win can mean more or less depending on its circumstances.
To bring it back to Toyota - while in ultimate terms, no the GT-One wasn't a successful race car because it failed to do what it was designed for - win Le Mans outright. But at the same time I feel its a little extreme to also call it an "also-ran" when it did actually fight for the victory and was in contention to the very end. Coming close to victory isn't a success story but it isn't exactly a complete failure either. While I wouldn't say we should celebrate almost-victories, we can at least recognise that it was a very good attempt in a competitive era.
If Toyota wants to do the same to Audi, we sure will have some interesting first few hours at La Sarthe 
but I'm sure someone else would have figured it out sooner or later.
