Fuji Saturday Notebook

***Cadillac’s first FIA World Endurance Championship pole adds to a run of five top-four grid positions for the No. 2 V-Series.R shared by Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber. The marque’s previous best qualifying results had been second in both the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

***Lynn’s first overall pole marked his fourth in all classes and his first since he topped the LMP2 order in qualifying at Le Mans back in 2017 for G-Drive Racing.

***LMGT3 pole-sitter Francois Heriau delivered Ferrari its first LMGT3 pole, and made it six different manufacturers to have topped qualifying in 2024 so far after Corvette, Porsche, Lamborghini, McLaren and Aston Martin.

***Antonio Fuoco expressed no disappointment at only being able to qualifying seventh in the No. 50 Ferrari 499P, given the Italian manufacturer’s struggles at Fuji last year.

***The Italian driver said: “We need to look at the positives because we made a step since last year. As a team I think we have worked well, and we did the best we could. We learned a lot last year, and we used the base of last year and through the weekend we made a good step forward. Our competitors for the championship are just in front of us, and we’ll try to fight with them if we have the chance.”

***Alex Malykhin failed to make Hyperpole for the first time this season on his way to 14th on the grid in the No. 92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R.

***Malykhin said: “We have some success ballast, but this is not the only reason. Our calculations say the success ballast is costing us four or five tenths, but we are missing more than one second. Maybe it’s a mix of ballast and set-up, or something else we don’t know about. It’s the same picture for the long runs, so it looks like will be a difficult race tomorrow.”

***Neither of the two Team WRT BMW M4 GT3s made Hyperpole, a first for 2024, with the two cars lining up 12th and 16th on the grid.

***With Hiroshi Koizumi (TF Sport Corvette) and Ryan Hardwick (Proton Competition Ford) having made Hyperpole for the first time this year, only the No. 60 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 and the No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3 have not made Hyperpole all year of the full-season LMGT3 grid.

***Toyota team director Rob Leupen has hinted that the marque’s current reserve driver Ritomo Miyata would embark on a similar-looking program in 2025, with his current racing activities including drives in the European Le Mans Series and Formula 2.

***Leupen said: “I think it’s unchanged for Ritomo. He is our reserve driver, but he is also racing in Formula 2. Everybody is on board with this, so no issues. There is no reason to promote him to the race line-up because he is doing Formula 2.”

***Pressed on whether Miyata would stay in Formula 2 for a second season, Leupen replied: “That is his focus for this season. We’ll see next year.”

***Gregoire Saucy was found to have been responsible for the incident in Friday’s Free Practice 1 that brought out a red flag, with stewards determining that the United Autosports McLaren driver hit Lynn’s Cadillac. Saucy was handed a warning.

***Hertz Team JOTA has been fined €500 ($550 USD) for not respecting the deadline for the upload of the team’s personnel declaration list for this weekend. The British squad submitted its list more than 24 hours after the Sept. 4 deadline.

***All six of Manthey’s LMGT3 drivers and its team manager, meanwhile, have also been fined €500 ($550 USD) for being four minutes late to the drivers’ meeting.

***BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos said the marque is “working very hard” to confirm the driver lineup for its factory Hypercar and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP entries next year. Roos, however, dismissed the possibility of the German manufacturer downsizing its pool of 23 factory drivers.

***Roos said: “When you look at how many programs we do, not only on the [LMDh] side but on the GT side, there are some weekends where we actually struggle to provide drivers for all the championships. There will also soon some a race weekend where we will struggle a bit again, where we have just too many things running at the same time.”

***Roos said there’s “nothing in deep discussion” at the moment on the prospects of bringing BMW M Team RLL to the 24 Hours of Le Mans next year as an additional Hypercar entry, although he recognized the potential benefits. “The more cars you have, it’s always better,” he said. “It gives you a better chance to win Le Mans.”

***Valentino Rossi, meanwhile, is still on track to get his first test in the BMW M Hybrid V8 later this year, although Roos declined to confirm it would happen at the post-season WEC rookie test in Bahrain. “He definitely will get a test this year,” said Roos.

***Ferrari AF Corse team manager Batti Pregliasco said he’s “very happy” with the driver lineups in its factory Nos. 50 and 51 cars and is ‘not expecting any big changes’ at the moment for next year. It comes amid continued talk of a shakeup in AF Corse’s satellite No. 83 Ferrari, with Robert Kubica and Robert Shwartzman potentially not continuing.

***When asked about potential changes to the No. 83 Ferrari, a car that he’s not technically responsible for, Pregliasco said: “It depends on different things. I would be very, very happy if they stayed like that because they are a very good team. But I cannot answer for this car.”

***Pregliasco indicated that should there be any changes, they would likely try out potential new drivers at the end-of-year Bahrain rookie test in November, with the team’s full focus currently on this year’s world championship quest.

***Porsche Penske Motorsport is likely to deploy team orders if the No. 5 Porsche 963 is ahead of the championship-leading No. 6 car in the race according to managing director Jonathan Diuguid.

***Diuguid said: “If we’re sitting there on Sunday and we’re running 1-2 with a 30-second lead, we’ll probably swap the cars to put ourselves in the best driver championship position but I think in general our goal is just to get a Porsche in front of the highest-finishing Ferrari and Toyota.”

***FIA World Endurance Championship CEO Frederic Lequien has returned to the paddock after missing the Circuit of The Americas event after breaking his elbow prior to the U.S. round.

***Both of the Hertz Team JOTA Porsches are running with logos with the name ‘JOTA’ rendered in Japanese katakana script (ジョタ) for this weekend.

***Several visitors from SUPER GT have been spotted in the paddock this weekend. Naoki Yamamoto was reunited with Jenson Button, his title-winning teammate from the 2018 season, while Yamamoto’s current driving partner Tadasuke Makino is working on-site as a photographer, along with another SUPER GT champion, Yuji Kunimoto.

***The 6 Hours of Fuji gets underway Sunday at 11 a.m. local time (Saturday, 10 p.m. EDT) with full coverage available on MAX in the U.S. and on MotorTrend TV from 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT and again from 3-4 a.m. EDT. Martin Haven and Anthony Davidson are joined by Graham Goodwin in the booth, with Bruce Jouanny on pit lane.

***Full action is also available on the FIA WEC App for certain regions, as well as Eurosport across Europe and Asia. Click here for the full TV and streaming distribution details.

John Dagys contributed to this report