Buemi Leads Toyota 1-2 in Opening Practice at Fuji

Sebastien Buemi led a one-two result for Toyota Gazoo Racing in the opening practice session for this weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship round at Fuji.

The Swiss driver clocked a time of 1:31.171 during the early stages of the 90-minute run and his No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid remained at the top of the overall leaderboard until the end.

Buemi beat his Toyota teammate Mike Conway by a quarter of a second, while the two Peugeot 9X8s finished third and fourth ahead of the sole Alpine A480 Gibson.

Peugeot’s best lap came courtesy of James Rossiter, who placed the French manufacturer’s No. 94 car ahead of its sister No. 93 machine with a 1:31.439 effort that came after half an hour.

Rossiter, who has raced at Fuji many times in Super GT, ended up within the same tenth of Conway’s No. 7 Toyota, and three-tenths ahead of Paul di Resta in the other Peugeot.

The two Peugeots completed 38 laps each, while the Toyotas gathered 52 and 49 laps respectively with the leading No. 8 car completing the most mileage in the field.

Alpine brought up the rear in the Hypercar class, with Nicolas Lapierre running a distant 1.3 seconds off the pace in the French brand’s grandfathered LMP1 prototype.

LMP2 was led by the Pro-Am Oreca 07 Gibson from AF Corse, courtesy of an early 1:32.624 from Ferrari factory driver Nicklas Nielsen.

The Dane finished 0.242 seconds clear of the perfectly matched United Autosports Orecas driven by Alex Lynn and Filipe Albuquerque, who both registered 1:32.886s.

Ferrari beat Porsche to the top of the times in GTE-Pro after the latter manufacturer initially set the pace.

James Calado’s time of 1:37.723 around 20 minutes into the session put the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo above the No. 92 Porsche 911 RSR-19 in the all-factory team class.

Calado collected the top spot by a margin of 0.169 seconds, while Michael Christensen settled for second with his Porsche teammate Richard Lietz slotting into third.

Corvette Racing’s Nick Tandy brought up the rear in GTE-Pro, one second shy of the category best in the No. 64 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R which received a 10 kg weight increase in a pre-event Balance of Performance update.

Matteo Cairoli was quick out of the gates in GTE-Am and went on to notch up the fastest lap in class with his early 1:39.054 marker aboard the No. 46 Team Project 1 Porsche.

Aston Martin Vantage GTEs ran second and third, with Tomonobu Fujii putting local outfit D’station Racing second and David Pittard moving NorthWest AMR into third.

Elsewhere in GTE-Am, Takeshi Kimura turned his first laps behind the wheel of the No. 56 Project 1 Porsche after arriving as a late substitute for the absent Brendan Iribe.

The first practice session of the weekend took place in dry conditions and passed without major incident, although there was a short Full Course Yellow period in the first few minutes due to debris on the track at Turn 2.

Free Practice 2, which also lasts 90 minutes, is due to start at 3:30 p.m. local time (2:30 a.m. ET).

RESULTS: Free Practice 1