How perfect Porsche inched closer to WEC title on Toyota’s home turf

Porsche knew it would be in the mix at Fuji. The Japanese circuit did, after all, provide the breakthrough race for its 963 LMDh in 2023. Yet the German manufacturer was far from convinced that it was going to win the penultimate round of the World Endurance Championship. But points leaders Laurens Vanthoor, Andre Lotterer and Kevin Estre executed a near-perfect race last Sunday to claim victory and leave the circuit with one hand on the Hypercar drivers’ title.

Execute was what the crew of the #6 Porsche did over six incident-packed hours round the 2.84-mile Fuji Speedway – there were three safety cars and a further two Full Course Yellows – and what its rivals failed to do. That included their pursuers for the drivers’ crown and Porsche’s in the manufacturers’ battle, Toyota and Ferrari, as well some upstarts in the fight at the front of the field.

The Hypercar grid was closer than ever in Japan – 14 cars and at least one from all eight manufacturers qualified within a second – and BMW, Cadillac and Alpine were all genuine contenders here. But none of them managed to string together the kind of clean race necessary to deprive Vanthoor and co of a second victory of the season, the first crew to do so.

Estre crossed the line at the end of the Fuji 6 Hours 16.6 seconds clear of the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh shared by Marco Wittmann, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor, brother of Laurens. The WRT trio had a more or less a clean race but, when push came to shove, the BMW didn’t quite have the pace to give Porsche a run for its money over the final exchanges.

The contest was reset by the third safety car of the race in the penultimate hour. The Porsche and the BMW were nose to tail when the race went green for final 90 or so minutes. But Estre was able to edge away: he was 3s clear of the younger Vanthoor inside 10 laps and the better part of nine by the time he made his final pitstop.

“Dries had good pace and I had to push all the way,” said Estre. “But I think we had the better car and a bit more in our tyres than them. We were confident that we’d have a good car here, but we didn’t expect to win and now have such a big gap in the championship.”

Estre, Lotterer and Vanthoor repeated their fine showing from 2023 at Fuji, but this time it was enough for victory

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

There were a couple of moments of jeopardy for Estre in the closing stages. The Frenchman had an off at Turn 1, the Porsche taking to the asphalt run-off. He joked that his team-mates didn’t believe his explanation.

“There was quite a lot of condensation from the air-conditioning and my foot slipped off the pedal,” he said. “It was quite a hot moment.”

Another followed before the race was out. Ryo Hirakawa aboard the #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar had pitted with an hour to go and came out of the pits almost a full lap behind the race leader. Estre and the Japanese driver had differing views of what happened next. “I was concentrating on my tyre prep and the #6 car pushed me off,” said Hirakawa.

The BMW might have been in a better position to take the fight to the Porsche at the end but for a problem much earlier in the race that forced a strategy rethink

Estre reckoned that the Toyota didn’t “make life easy” for him and actually repassed him in the twiddly final sector despite receiving blue flags prior to the contact at the penultimate corner. The stewards agreed with the Frenchman and handed the local man a drive-through.

As strong as the BMW was in Fuji on the way to a first WEC podium, building on the impressive showing last time out at Austin earlier in the month, it didn’t have anything for the Porsche when push came to shove at the end.

“Fighting Kevin at the end was always going to be difficult,” said Vanthoor. “On pure pace in free air, it was close, but they did have a bit of an upper hand. But on tyre deg they were really good.”

The BMW might have been in a better position to take the fight to the Porsche at the end but for a problem much earlier in the race that forced a strategy rethink. Marciello had a coming together with Earl Bamber in the Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh late in the third hour that broke a rear rim and forced an early handover to Vanthoor.

The BMW in which Wittmann had run second to Bamber in the pole-winning Caddy through to the first round of pitstops had stopped for fuel and tyres during the Virtual Safety Car that led into the proper thing early in hour two, unlike the winning Porsche and the Cadillac ahead of it. Any advantage that might have given it – and it would probably have been marginal given that there was another safety car to come – was undone by Marciello’s enforced early stop.

BMW claimed its first podium despite Marciello tangling with Bamber, forcing an early stop

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Fuji was a highly tactical race, one in which the manufacturers were prepared to mix it up to try to gain an advantage. Toyota and Ferrari, whose best-placed crews arrived in Japan tied 12 points behind the drivers of the #6 Porsche, felt they had no choice if they were to get anything out of the weekend. Neither the GR010 nor the 499P LMH were competitive.

Ferrari had a disastrous start to the race that effectively removed two of its three cars from contention. Robert Kubica locked up in the #83 AF Corse-run customer car at Turn 1 on the second lap, tagging the back of Frederic Makowiecki in the #5 Porsche, triggering a multi-car incident that resulted in the first safety car. The Porsche nudged Antonio Giovinazzi in the #51 Ferrari into a half spin, the Italian doing likewise to the #35 Alpine A424 LMDh with Ferdinand Habsburg driving.

Ferrari’s challenge was effectively down to one car at a stroke. Kubica pitted for new front and rear bodywork and would also be penalised 30s for causing the accident, while the #51 factory car also needed a new nose and tail. The floor was also damaged, which blunted its performance thereafter, and the impact most likely triggered its retirement in the final hour with a hybrid problem.

If there was any good news for Ferrari it was that its championship-contending crew, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen and Antonio Fuoco in #50, came through the melee without incident. Ferrari opted for a creative strategy during the protracted second-hour caution caused by a loose advertising hoarding at Turn 3. Nielsen was given a set of fresh Michelins when he stopped under the yellows.

Thanks to the #15 BMW’s broken rim, the tactic allowed Nielsen to emerge in the lead after his next stop. He was then able to make life difficult for Lotterer for a while – “I had to take a bit of a risk to pass him,” said the German – but that was as good as it got for Ferrari.

The time gained disappeared with the safety car in hour five. The true competitiveness of the Ferrari under the Fuji Balance of Performance – or rather lack of it – was highlighted as Fuoco plummeted down the order to an eventual ninth. Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s sportscar racing technical director, took some kind of solace from the factory AF Corse team’s strategy calls with #50.

“Lacking pace, the only thing we could do was play with stint lengths and have new tyres when the others were on used tyres,” he explained. “The strategy can work when the race is green, but when the last safety car packed everyone up, the situation was different. It was impossible to defend position.”

Toyota also pushed the boat out on strategy over the second half of the race in the knowledge that it couldn’t stay with the frontrunners on pace after receiving another double BoP hit – less power and more weight – for Japan.

Kubica triggered mayhem at the first corner which also badly hurt the progress of sister #51 Ferrari

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Nyck de Vries, who had taken over from Mike Conway, did a stint and a half on the same four tyres before Kamui Kobayashi got in for the run to the flag. Not only would the Japanese driver have two fresh sets of tyres, but the #7 car had effectively taken the splash of fuel it would have needed late on had it stayed on a conventional strategy. The car looked on course for a podium until the second safety car reset the race and wiped out any potential gain.

Toyota’s championship challengers still might have salvaged a smattering of points from the day until Kobayashi made a hopeful move to regain the place he’d just lost to Matt Campbell in the #5 Porsche at Turn 3 as they battled over seventh. He hit the back of the German machine, the spinning cars making contact for a second time on the asphalt run-off. Extensive damage resulted in the retirement of both cars, though on the Toyota only after the differential was found to be damaged on the completion of the bodywork and suspension repairs.

Toyota opted for the reverse strategy on the #8 GR010 Hirakawa shared with Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley. It went long on the fuel to avoid the splash, a tactic that was also undone by the safety car. Hirakawa was running fourth when he was penalised for the incident with Estre.

"We split the strategies between the two cars in the hope that one would have the lucky ticket, but the safety car came at a bad time for both of them"
David Floury

There were no complaints in the Toyota camp that Kobayashi received a suspended drive-through penalty for the clash with Campbell. “It was our mistake: clearly we were too far behind,” conceded Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury, who was more forthright in his opinions on the penalty that dropped Hirakawa to 10th.

“Once again we can question the decisions that were taken against us,” he said. The drive-through was awarded because the Toyota driver was deemed to have ignored blue flags, but Floury explained that drivers are only required to cede position on seeing the flags after two sectors of the circuit. He pointed out Hirakawa was first shown the blues at Turn 8, halfway through sector two, and was behind by the end of sector three.

And on Toyota’s strategy calls, he said: “After two or two and a half hours we realised that if we didn’t try something we didn’t stand a chance. In terms of lap time we were clearly slower than our main competitors. We split the strategies between the two cars in the hope that one would have the lucky ticket, but the safety car came at a bad time for both of them.”

This was another opportunity lost for Cadillac, which had claimed the pole with Alex Lynn aboard the solo Ganassi-run factory car. The Brit had had to abort his first flier in the Hyperpole session but was always confident that he could pull another quick one out of the bag. And he did just that.

Cadillac had the pace to win at Fuji, but its race was ended by Bamber's accident while battling Alpine

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Bamber converted pole into the race lead and held the top spot until the car, now with Lynn at the wheel, was leapfrogged by Vanthoor during the first pit cycle. When the New Zealander got back in he was battling with Marciello for third when he sustained a front-right puncture in their Turn 1 incident.

Two and a half or so hours later Bamber was duking it out with Mick Schumacher in the #36 Alpine that went on to take the final podium stop when he lost it in the quick 100R right-hander and nosed into the barrier with just over half an hour to go. He made it back to the pits, but there was no repairing the extensively damaged car.

Fuji was a race Cadillac could have won, and the perfunctory post-race comments from the drivers explained little but probably revealed a lot about the mood in the camp. The V-Series.R was almost certainly the fastest race car on Sunday.

Alpine was in the mix with the Caddy, the Porsche and the BMW in terms of pace. It continued to build on the progress shown last time out in Austin, though it was the slower of the two cars that took the first silverware for the A424.

Schumacher swept through into the podium positions in the final hour in the car he shared with Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere, moving up from ninth with an hour to go. On fresher tyres in the final stages, he had the legs of Fuoco in the #50 Ferrari and both Jota customer Porsches that ended up fifth and sixth, #12 ahead of #38.

The silverware should probably have gone to the sister car in which Milesi had qualified sixth. The car he shared with Jules Gounon (in for Paul-Loup Chatin at Fuji) and Habsburg looked good for third despite the first-named’s involvement in the lap two snafu.

It was an impressive display from Alpine and the Signatech factory team. Not only did Milesi set fastest lap, but he was second only to Bamber on a 50-lap quickest average.

The car ended up an unrepresentative seventh after Milesi was handed a drive-through for a contact at the final corner with Charlie Eastwood in the #81 LMGT3 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette. The Frenchman reckoned the penalty was “a bit harsh”, insisting that the Chevy was “going left-right, left-right” and then “moved at the last minute”.

Storming drive from Schumacher on fresher tyres in the closing stages helped Alpine to its first podium after Milesi's penalty

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Schumacher conceded after the race that he was a bit worried about a flying Mikkel Jensen in the #93 Peugeot 9X8 2024 LMH at the end. The Dane finished only 3.5s behind him after making similar progress to the German in the final laps, fourth place easily representing the French manufacturer’s best finish with the revised car introduced at Imola in April. The sister Peugeot started by Loic Duval had run in the top 10 early doors, but it was the entry that Jensen shared with Jean-Eric Vergne and Nico Muller that had the pace at the end.

Like Schumacher, Jensen had the tyres under him at the most important stage of the race, a deliberate tactic on the part of the Peugeot Sport team.

“We knew it would come down to the end of the race," said technical director Olivier Jansonnie. "We had saved new tyres for the final stint, and it worked. Maybe we didn’t have the most competitive car, but we made the most of it with our strategy.”

"For me it is game over, but I’m not saying we are giving up. We will try to work miracles" 
Ferdinando Cannizzo

The #94 car ended up eighth behind the two Jota Porsches and the penalised Alpine. Neither of the British team’s customer 963s had made it through to Hyperpole for the fastest 10 cars in first qualifying and nor did they have the pace of the factory entries in the race. The call not to change tyres on either car at their final pitstops in the name of track position didn’t quite pay dividends.

Victory for Vanthoor, Lotterer and Estre means they go to the season finale in Bahrain in November 35 points ahead of the #50 Ferrari and 37 ahead of the #7 Toyota. With just 39 points up for grabs in the eight-hour race Ferrari and Toyota have conceded the drivers’ title.

“For me it is game over, but I’m not saying we are giving up,” said Cannizzo. “We will try to work miracles.”

He was talking about the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships, whereas Toyota is still in the hunt in the latter, lying just 10 points behind Porsche. But Floury was prepared to admit that Toyota’s unbroken run of WEC drivers’ titles in the Hypercar era is about to come to an end.

Toyota accepts that its hopes of beating Porsche to the drivers' title now hang by a thread, although its manufacturers' hopes are far stronger

Photo by: Andreas Beil