Alpine Power Boost Among Minor Changes in Fuji BoP

Alpine has been handed a power boost in the Balance of Performance for this weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship race at Fuji, which sees relatively few changes in the Hypercar class compared to recent rounds of the series.

Confirmed in a bulletin published on Monday, the Alpine A424 as been handed a 6kW power increase, bringing it up to 512kW for the penultimate round of the season.

There are few other significant changes in the top category following a wet round at the Circuit of The Americas earlier this month, meaning that race data from that event will not have been taken into account for BoP calculation purposes.

The BoP for COTA was based on data taken from each car’s best two of the previous three regular races (Imola, Spa, Sao Paulo), a change of metholodogy from the Sao Paulo round in July, when only data taken from the two previous races were used.

BMW’s M Hybrid V8 and the Porsche 963 have been handed modest power increases of 2kW each, while the Cadillac V-Series.R and the Toyota GR010 Hybrid have both had their power reduced by a single kilowatt.

Power levels for the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Ferrari 499P and Peugeot 9X8 remain unaltered from COTA, while minimum weights remain unchanged across the board.

It means the Aston Martin and Peugeot remain at the mandated minimum of 1030 kg, while Toyota and Ferrari remain the joint-heaviest cars at 1069 kg.

Some changes have been made to the Power Gain values for Fuji, with the biggest change being an increase of 2.5 percent above the 250 km/h threshold for Peugeot.

Cadillac, Alpine, BMW, Toyota and Ferrari all have increases of one percent or less, with the Aston Martin and Porsche both remaining unchanged.

Ford Mustang GT3 Weight Increase Headlines LMGT3 BoP

There are more significant changes in the BoP for the LMGT3 class, with four cars receiving weight increases for this weekend’s visit to Japan.

Chief among these is the Ford Mustang GT3 that took pole last time out at COTA, with the American marque being handed a 15 kg weight increase.

It gives the Mustang the third-highest base weight in the class at 1349 kg, behind only the Ferrari 296 GT3, up by 4 kg to 1358 kg, and the Lexus RC F GT3 that remains unchanged at 1354 kg for parent brand Toyota’s home event.

The other two cars with weight increases are the BMW M4 GT3 EVO (+8 kg/1340 kg) and the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R (+3 kg/1338 kg).

Aston Martin’s Vantage GT3 Evo is the only car to see a reduction, dropping by 5kg to 1339 kg, with the Lexus, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo and Porsche 911 GT3 R all remaining at the same weights at which they ran at COTA.

The only change to base power levels, below the 200 km/h Power Gain threshold, comes with a one percent increase for the BMW, while all nine cars have had their second-stage power tweaked, most notably the Aston Martin, which is down 1.7 percent.