Fuji Post-Race Notebook

***Sunday’s 6 Hours of Fuji was the second-closest finish in FIA World Endurance Championship history, as Ryo Hirakawa’s No. 8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid took the checkered flag 0.591 seconds clear of Victor Martins’ No. 36 Alpine A424. It compares to the 0.276 seconds by which Porsche’s two 919 Hybrids were split at the Circuit of the Americas in 2017, but this time was the closest finish between two cars of different makes.

***Toyota notched up its 52nd WEC win in total and its tenth on home soil. In his 99th WEC start, Sebastien Buemi took a record-extending 28th career win, with Brendon Hartley moving clear of Toyota stablemate for second on the all-time list with 25. Hirakawa meanwhile took his eighth win and his second at Fuji.

***With the No. 8 Toyota crew becoming the first repeat winners of the year, Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa now lead the sister No. 7 crew of Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries, who finished eighth, by ten points. In the manufacturers’ standings, Toyota now leads BMW by 23 points with two races to go.

***Despite missing out on back-to-back Fuji wins with the No. 36 car of Martins and Jules Gounon, Alpine’s best-ever points haul for one race (30) has drawn them level with Cadillac for fourth in the manufacturers’ standings, 19 points behind third-placed Ferrari.

***Toyota Racing technical director David Floury admitted that the exact refuel time for the No. 8 Toyota was “guesswork” as the Japanese outfit anticipated that the final safety car period would be a long one due to the barrier repair work at Turn 1 in the wake of Finn Gehrsitz’s crash. The official pit stop time for the No. 8 car was 50.744 seconds, which compared to 1:03 for the No. 35 Alpine and 1:07 for the No. 36 car.

***Floury told reporters post-race: “We had no information; we just looked at the TV and try to guess how much shorter the race will be, and how much energy you can save. I think we had only two laps of energy left at the end. It was a matter of risk management, but Ryo did a fantastic job. You can never be fully sure, because you have to estimate the pace deficit to the opposition, how quickly they will overtake the BMW… we were helped in the process by the No. 15 actually. But Ryo was amazing. He did very well.”

***BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos said that the third-place finish achieved by the No. 15 M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello was the best result on offer after it likewise gambled on short-filling the car at the crucial final stop. Vanthoor dropped behind Martins’ Alpine in the fight for second before falling 6.4 seconds behind the winning Toyota at the flag.

***Roos told reporters: “That was what we had in the car at the end. We also double-stinted the tires. Some of it was energy management, but even if we had the possibility to go flat out, I think it would have been difficult.”

***Lamenting the No. 20 car’s failure to score points for a second race in a row after picking up two punctures after contact with the No. 51 Ferrari, Roos added: “In the beginning car No. 20 was quite strong in terms of tire management and energy management, so we were quite confident to make our way up. But it’s still hard when you start at the back. Even in endurance racing, the starting position has a big influence.”

***Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA technical director Tomoki ‘Taka’ Takahashi told Sportscar365 he felt fifth and seventh place for the team’s two V-Series.Rs was mostly a fair reflection of the brand’s performance level. “Maybe we could have got one or two more spots, but that last safety car mixed things up, and we had the penalty for the No. 12 [for speeding under FCY]. For where our pace was, I think the result was ok.”

***Peugeot team principal Emmanuel Esnault was satisfied with the No. 94 9X8 crew’s recovery from 15th on the grid to finish sixth, which marked the brand’s best result of the year. “It was quite a good recovery. If you had offered us yesterday this result, we would have signed straight away. It was a good job by the strategy team to take an opportunistic approach, which we have to highlight, and the drivers did a good job.”

***Esnault added that the exact cause of the gearbox problem that put an end to the No. 93 car’s race remains under investigation as he explained Stoffel Vandoorne’s exit from the marque with two races to go. “We part ways with a very good relationship. We wish him the best for the future. On our side, we are focusing on building something strong for 2027. It was left open contractually, and as we have big ambitions to build for 2027 with the new Evo [car], we want to capitalize on everything we can to prepare for next year.”

***Esnault refused to confirm Vandoorne’s replacement for the final two rounds of the season, but all signs point to Alex Quinn stepping up from his current reserve role to join Nick Cassidy and Paul di Resta starting with next month’s Barcelona race.

***Ferrari head of track operations Giuliano Salvi revealed that the No. 50 499P’s slow pit stop in which its air jacks failed was down to a pneumatic leakage, while the issue that caused the car shared by Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina finally stopped on track with a battery problem. “It’s quite a mature car and we never had anything like that,” said Salvi about the pneumatic problem. “It’s quite unexpected and it’s a shame. Honestly, it’s something that shouldn’t happen.”

***Salvi said the battery problem appeared unrelated to the pneumatic issue following initial investigations, but admitted it was “a bit suspicious”. He added: “It’s strange we had two different things; maybe something broke and cut something else. But there was no way to restart, and already the race was over with the [slow] pit stop.”

***On the Korean team’s Asian debut, Genesis Magma Racing saw a chance of points for the No. 19 GMR-001 go south when Paul-Loup Chatin earned a drive-through penalty for speeding under yellow flags in the final hour. Mathieu Jaminet was running eighth with 11 minutes to go when the penalty was served.

***Daniel Juncadella, who ran third in the opening stages behind the Alpines having started from the same position, told Sportscar365: “There are still little things we need to improve; we need to get better at executing and that’s part of the learning process. It’s not one particular area, it’s just a little bit of everything that we need to get better at and that’s what the very experienced teams like Toyota showed today. They did an amazing call at the end to jump from sixth to first and we unfortunately didn’t make that one.”

***In the LMGT3 class, the No. 32 crew of Darren Leung, Sean Gelael and Augusto Farfus delivered Team WRT and BMW their second win of the season, the first since the season-opening Imola round with the No. 69 car, and only the Bavarian brand’s third of the LMGT3 era. For Gelael, it was a sixth career win, while for Leung it was a third and for works BMW driver Farfus only a second.

***The same driver combination triumphed together in the 2024 6 Hours of Imola, while Leung and Gelael were both part of the United Autosports McLaren crew that won last year’s Lone Star Le Mans round along with Marino Sato.

***Mattia Drudi described his surge from eighth to second at the final restart in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin as “tough but fun”, as he recovered from the contact with Gehrsitz that left him with a delaminated left-rear tire. It’s a result that promotes he and co-drivers Ian James and Zach Robichon to second in the standings, 24 points behind leader Jonny Edgar, whose No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R was fifth.

***Drudi said: “The first stint was a bit more difficult, I was struggling with the balance of the car and we lost some seconds to the car in front, and then there was contact with the McLaren. We had a puncture as well and we were lucky that we didn’t have more damage. We were able to make it back to the pits, change tires, and we did a really good stop at the end to jump some cars. I was on new tires, I was really quick at the end. Seeing how the race started I think we can be very happy about second position.”

***While Gehrsitz did not appear in the post-race mixed zone, his Garage 59 co-driver Benjamin Goethe explained the crash from his perspective. “I think the reason they were getting so close to each other was that Finn was trying to get a side-draft, and there was contact. Normally door-to-door contact would not result in a crash but the wheels made contact which was led to the car being lifted up and spat out to the left. I spoke to Finn, he’s obviously quite disappointed, but the important thing is that they was able to walk, able to communicate and no bad injuries.”

***Third place for the Racing Team Turkey-branded No. 34 TF Sport Corvette of Charlie Eastwood, Peter Dempsey and Salih Yoluc elevates that car to third in the standings, 28 points behind the sister No. 33 car. “Charlie did a phenomenal job at the end to try and hang on for the win on double-stinted tires,” said Dempsey. “To bring up P3 is good for the championship so there’s all to play for heading into the last two rounds.”

***The 6H Fuji featured 28 classified finishers out of 35 starters, the lowest number of the season so far — one fewer than the 29 finishers from the 6H Spa.

***Garage 59’s Tom Fleming secured the Goodyear Wingfoot award based on voting by fans on social media. The other drivers nominated were Jonny Edgar (TF Sport), Eric Powell and Sebastian Priaulx (both Proton Competition).

***Organizers revealed a record three-day fan attendance of 72,400, surpassing last year’s 66,400. Of those, 45,300 were present for race day, up from 39,700 last year.

***The WEC season continues on Oct. 16-18 with the 6 Hours of Barcelona, as the series makes its race debut at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya that previously hosted the official pre-season Prologue test in July 2019.