Toyota Steals Home Win From Under Noses of Alpine

Toyota took a shock home FIA World Endurance Championship victory with a late strategic gambit, stealing away a 6 Hours of Fuji victory that looked almost certain to go the way of Alpine for the majority of the distance.

Ryo Hirakawa, Brendon Hartley and Sebastien Buemi emerged victorious in the No. 8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid after jumping from sixth into the lead during a rush to pit lane during the fourth and final safety car period of an eventful race.

It was enough for Hirakawa to beat Victor Martins, sharing the No. 36 Alpine A424 with Jules Gounon, to the checkered flag by 0.591 seconds in a thrilling finish.

Alpine had looked well on course for a 1-2 finish until a major crash for the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Finn Gehrsitz with 58 minutes to go.

Gehrsitz was running side-by-side with Mattia Drudi’s Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo along the start/finish straight when the two cars made contact, spearing the McLaren off head-first into the barriers on the left-hand side.

The German driver walked away from the incident, as Drudi limped back to the pits with a delaminated left-rear tire, and a lengthy clean-up operation began.

Once the pit lane opened, virtually every car pitted, shaking up the order as both the No. 8 Toyota and the No. 15 BMW M Hybrid short-filled in a bid to gain track position, filling their virtual energy tanks only 72 percent and 76 percent respectively.

Martins meanwhile slipped from the lead to fifth, but after the restart with 20 minutes to go, the Frenchman made short work of both Marco Sorensen’s No. 009 Aston Martin Valkyrie and the sister No. 35 Alpine of Charles Milesi to move back to third.

Dries Vanthoor’s No. 15 BMW proved a trickier proposition, and by the time Martins passed at the unorthodox location of Turn 14, Hirakawa was 2.6 seconds to the good.

That lead rapidly evaporated as the two carved their way through LMGT3 traffic, but once in clear air Hirakawa was able to hold Martins at bay to score Toyota’s first home win since 2023 and the Japanese marque’s third of the season.

It puts the No. 8 crew in the lead of the championship by ten points with two races to go.

Vanthoor hung on to score the final podium position for himself, Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello, while Milesi and Ferdinand Habsburg, who had enjoyed a spell in the lead of the race around half-distance, had to be content with fourth.

Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s No. 38 car shared by Jack Aitken, Sebastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber completed the top five.

Peugeot scored its best finish of the season so far in sixth with the No. 94 car of Malthe Jakobsen, Loic Duval and Theo Pourchaire ahead of the second of the two Cadillac V-Series.Rs, the No. 12 of Will Stevens and Norman Nato.

Toyota’s No. 7 car finished eighth, losing ground when Kamui Kobayashi picked up a drive-through penalty for FCY speeding in the car he shared with Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries. The trio now sit second in the points behind the No. 8 crew.

Aston Martin’s hopes of a first podium finish — or even a victory — with the Valkyrie fell away in the closing stages as Marco Sorensen dropped from fourth at the restart, having run third prior to the last safety car, all the way down to ninth.

The sister No. 007 car was also well in the mix until Tom Gamble picked up a drive-through penalty for crossing the white line on pit entry.

The car Gamble shared with Harry Tincknell failed to score points in 14th place, their fate sealed by a green-flag stop just before the virtual safety car allowed all of its rivals to pit prior to the penultimate safety car period.

That and a late drive-through penalty for the No. 19 Genesis GMR-001 that had looked good for a top-five finish for much of the race promoted the best of the Ferrari 499Ps, the No. 51 machine, into the final points-paying position in 10th.

Ferrari’s Lone Star Le Mans-winning No. 50 entry was the best-placed of the Italian marque’s stable for most of the race until it suffered a three-minute pit stop due to an air jack failure, which preceded the car stopping on track at the final corner.

The No. 50 Ferrari was one of two retirements in the Hypercar class along with the No. 93 Peugeot that went out with gearbox failure.

Genesis’s first WEC race in Asia ended in disappointment after its best-ever grid slots, as the No. 19 car was 11th and the No. 17 machine was 15th and last of the Hypercar finishers after a failed gamble on wet tires during drizzle in the closing stages.

BMW’s No. 20 crew of Rene Rast, Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde were 13th after being delayed by two punctures, both arising from instances of contact with the No. 51 Ferrari, which picked up a five-second penalty for the second instance.

Rast and Frijns now trail by 14 points in the drivers’ standings with two races left.

WRT BMW Surges to Win Amid Late LMGT3 Drama

An LMGT3 contest that took multiple twists and turns throughout the six hours finally went the way of the No. 32 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Augusto Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung as Farfus put on an overtaking clinic late on.

The No. 32 car had been a contender throughout thanks to strong stints from FIA Bronze-rated Leung and Gelael, but didn’t look as if it would be in a position to win until the late crash involving the McLaren of Gehrsitz that turned the race upside down.

At the restart, it was the two TF Sport-run Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs running first and second as neither took fresh tires, promoting Charlie Eastwood to the lead in the Racing Team Turkey-branded No. 34 car ahead of Nicky Catsburg in the No. 33.

Farfus meanwhile took the restart sixth before passing Ayhancan Guven’s Manthey Porsche, Marvin Kirchhoefer in the surviving Garage 59 McLaren and the No. 77 Proton Competition Ford of Sebastian Priaulx in short order.

Armed with fresh tires, Farfus soon caught and passed Catsburg and then Eastwood, and was followed through by Drudi, who had somehow recovered from the earlier incident with Gehrsitz and was proving similarly strong in the tricky conditions.

Farfus held on by 1.062 seconds against Drudi, who secured second for himself and Heart of Racing co-drivers Ian James and Zach Robichon.

Eastwood, Peter Dempsey and Salih Yoluc finished third, while a late surge from Davide Rigon put the No. 54 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo fourth at the finish ahead of the No. 33 Corvette, which nonetheless extended its points lead.

RESULTS: 6 Hours of Fuji