Fuji Friday Notebook

***The best time of 1:29.577 set during Friday practice at Fuji by BMW driver Dries Vanthoor was marginally slower than the equivalent benchmark from last year’s opening day of track action. That was a 1:29.523 set by Toyota driver Sebastien Buemi.

***Ferrari driver James Calado is set for his 75th WEC start this weekend. Set to hit the 70-start milestone are Proton Competition’s Neel Jani and Ferrari LMGT3 driver Davide Rigon. Along with Calado, Nicolas Lapierre, Brendon Hartley and Andre Lotterer are the other drivers to have joined the ’70 starts club’ this year.

***Toyota driver and team principal Kamui Kobayashi celebrated his 38th birthday on Friday. During the pre-event press conference, Kobayashi jokingly revealed that additional motivation to perform on home turf comes from the fact that this weekend’s result will influence which hotel he and his teammates stay in at Fuji next year.

***Kobayashi said: “We are staying at the Fuji Speedway hotel because we won last year at Fuji. Usually we stay in the Route Inn Gotemba, which is a really small hotel. So if we don’t win this year, we have to go back to the Route Inn Gotemba next year!”

***Ryo Hirakawa is set for his first appearance as a qualifying driver in the WEC for the No. 8 Toyota on Saturday. “It’s an honor to take this position,” Hirakawa told Sportscar365. “It’s my third year in the team and I’m quite happy that the team allowed me to do this job. Hopefully I can qualify up front and give my teammates an easier time.”

***Hirakawa clarified that he has been suffering from bronchitis in the run-up to this weekend’s Fuji race, but said this had no impact on his performance on Friday, when he set the fastest time for the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid.

***Marino Sato surprised his United Autosports team boss Richard Dean when he unveiled a special helmet design paying homage to the Briton, who spent three seasons racing in Japan in 1993-95 in Formula 3, Formula 3000 and touring cars.

***Alpine team principal Philippe Sinault told Sportscar365 the decision to swap Jules Gounon and Paul-Loup Chatin for Fuji was “the initial plan” of the team since the off-season. He said: “Even though Jules raced [at Spa and Imola] because of Ferdinand Habsburg’s injury, we decided not to change the plan, with the full agreement of Paul-Loup also.”

***He added: “We are still in the first year of the program. We are still learning, also with the drivers. This is why we wanted to have a reserve driver, but he is not only a reserve. We wanted to give him more opportunity in a Hypercar to give ourselves more data to analyze Jules’ level. We need this race to have a better understanding on him.”

***Sinault clarified that Chatin is not on-site at Fuji this weekend, but will take part in Alpine’s debriefs from his home in France via video link.

***Ferrari’s endurance race and test operations manager Giuliano Salvi believes the brake cooling updates that debuted on the Ferrari 499P at Interlagos will pay dividends this weekend, at a circuit the Italian manufacturer struggled at last year. Salvi, however, said Bahrain will be the ultimate test for the new package.

***He told Sportscar365: “I think it should be helpful here, because they are not affecting performance, but it should allow us to have a more open and wide setup window for our car. We found some direction. Last year we struggled quite a lot here; it was the first year so we had some ups and downs and it was the process of understanding the 499P.”

***Salvi said Toyota is likely to be “the reference” this weekend despite the Japanese manufacturer being hit with a Balance of Performance adjustment change for the second consecutive round and no changes to the 499P compared to the configuration last time out at Circuit of The Americas.

***Ferrari AF Corse team manager Batti Pregliasco indicated the team is still seeking some clarity in the wake of its rejected appeal over the results of the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in May, which was heard by the FIA International Court of Appeals last week and the results communicated on Tuesday.

***Pregliasco stressed that Ferrari was seeking clarity in terms of the regulations and not to overturn the results of the race, which was won by Hertz Team JOTA.

***He told Sportscar365: “This created a little bit of a precedent, so we need to understand, also for the future, what’s going on. We respect, absolutely, what the FIA court and ICA does and the result of the appeal, although we don’t have the final answer of what was really the matter. I think it will be clarified soon by new regulations or the future with the committee.”

***Sportscar365 understands that Michelin has scheduled a single-day wet tire test at Paul Ricard for next month, which will be attended by the majority of the Hypercar manufacturers as part of the development process for the new-for-2026 compounds.

***Two more days of regular testing follows the Michelin test, with Porsche and Toyota among those confirmed to be staying on for the full duration.

***A revised LMGT3 Balance of Performance was issued on Friday, with modified base power levels for the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo and the Porsche 911 GT3 R and modifications to the Power Gain for five of the nine models. The revised table, which replaces the one released earlier in the week, can be seen here.

***Manthey EMA driver Yasser Shahin took part in last month’s Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia round at Fuji in order to learn the circuit ahead of this weekend’s race, which co-driver Richard Lietz explained has been one element in an extensive testing program for the two-car Porsche LMGT3 outfit this season.

***Lietz told Sportscar365: “We have put in a lot of effort to test the new car. We did a 50-hour test before the season even started. We went to Brazil during the championship, we rented it for two days, we tested at COTA. I don’t know how much testing the others are doing, but our Bronze drivers are fully motivated and doing the best they can on the performance side. And therefore we have had a good season.”

***Saturday track action comprises Free Practice 3, starting at 10:20 a.m. local time (Friday 9:20 p.m. EDT) and Qualifying, which begins at 2:20 p.m. (1:20 a.m. EDT).

John Dagys contributed to this report