Alpine Leads Aston Martin in Second Fuji Practice

Alpine moved to the top of the timesheets in second practice for this weekend’s Fuji round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, as Victor Martins set the quickest time.

Martins, who is sharing the No. 36 Alpine A424 with Jules Gounon as a duo this weekend after the French marque’s decision to slim down to two-driver lineups, set the best of 1:29.304 early on in another largely incident-free session on Friday afternoon.

Alpine held a one-two thanks to Charles Milesi’s 1:29.397 effort in the sister No. 35 car, but that was surpassed by Harry Tincknell in the No. 007 Aston Martin Valkyrie, who split the two French cars with a time only 0.039 seconds off Martins’ pace.

Milesi’s time was good enough for third, while Genesis continued its strong start to the weekend as Mathieu Jaminet left his best of 1:29.492 for the very end of the session, improving to fourth place in the No. 19 GMR-001 that was sixth-fastest in FP1.

That demoted Mathys Jaubert to fifth in the sister No. 17 Genesis and Marco Sorensen’s No. 009 Heart of Racing Team Valkyrie to sixth.

Jack Aitken was seventh-fastest aboard the No. 38 Cadillac V-Series.R as the top seven runners all surpassed the FP1 benchmark set by Toyota’s Ryo Hirakawa.

Toyota had a more low-key second session as Hirakawa was eighth in the No. 8 TR010 Hybrid, behind the late-improving No. 19 Genesis of Mathieu Jaminet, while the sister No. 7 car of Kamui Kobayashi was 13th-fastest.

Nick Cassidy, a winner at Fuji in Super Formula and SUPER GT, was ninth-fastest in the No. 93 Peugeot 9X8, while the top ten was completed by Will Stevens in the No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA car.

Ferrari ended Friday with none of its three 499Ps in the top ten, the No. 50 car ending up best of the trio in 11th, 0.685 seconds off the pace.

BMW’s tough day meanwhile continued as the best of the German brand’s M Hybrid V8s, the No. 15 car, was only 14th in the hands of Dries Vanthoor.

In the LMGT3 class, Ben Tuck set the pace aboard the No. 77 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 EVO with a best time of 1:39.828, easily surpassing the Friday morning benchmark laid down by Finn Gehrsitz’s Garage 59 McLaren.

Lin Hodenius was second-fastest in the No. 79 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, only 0.045 seconds slower than Tuck, while Hadrien David went third-fastest in the No. 78 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3.

The respective second cars from Iron Lynx and Akkodis ASP made up the top five, driven by Rui Andrade and Clemens Schmid respectively.

The third and final free practice session for the 6H Fuji takes place on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. local time (Friday 8:30 p.m. EST).

RESULTS: Free Practice 2