How Porsche ensured Toyota's WEC homecoming was anything but straightforward

Toyota claimed a ninth victory in 11 starts at the Fuji 6 Hours in the modern era of the World Endurance Championship and duly wrapped up this year’s manufacturers’ title with a round to go. But it was far from business as usual as the home manufacturer swept to a 1-2.

Porsche led for a few minutes short of four hours and but for a strange procedural error might have taken second position last weekend. The significance wasn’t just that another brand is now in the thick of the battle; this was the first time that an LMDh car had challenged the Le Mans Hypercar hegemony.

Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi took a fourth victory of the season to shrink what had been pretty long odds on a repeat of their 2019-20 and 2021 titles. Second place for the sister Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH means that the advantage at the top of the classification for Sebastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley is down to 15 points, with 39 up for grabs at the eight-hour Bahrain finale in November.

It is good news that the drivers’ championship battle is genuinely open going into the final round, but even better news was the performance of the Porsche 963 LMDh in a series in which the wins so far this year have been divvied up between Toyota and Ferrari. The #6 entry shared by Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer took the chequered flag within 50s of the winner and on another day might have finished between the Toyotas.

That the Porsche led for four hours had a lot to do with a hectic first corner at which the majority of the Hypercar field went beyond track limits. Vanthoor jumped into the lead with an opportunistic — cheeky even — move down the inside of Conway, and from the mayhem the Toyotas emerged third and sixth, which had turned into fourth and sixth for Conway and Buemi by lap five.

They were behind both Ferraris, which was important in the narrative of this race. The Italian cars didn’t have the pace to challenge for the win in Japan, and quite frankly struggled all the way through the six hours, but they were quick enough to delay the Toyotas. It wasn’t until lap 42 that both GR010s had cleared them to get up to second and third, and by that time Vanthoor was 16s up the road.

Vanthoor muscled into the lead at the start as most of the field ran deep into Turn 1

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

But the fact that it took the better part of three hours from that point for the Toyotas to get ahead was a clear indication of the giant strides that the German manufacturer and the Porsche Penske Motorsport squad have made with the 963 in the break since the last WEC round at Monza in July.

There has only been one test in Europe since, at Spa, but there have been further runs and, of course, racing with the North American arm of the team in the IMSA SportsCar Championship. It resulted, said Estre, “in the best 963 we’ve had, not perfect, but easily the best”.

Porsche had clearly made a step forward in both braking stability, previously the Achilles’ heel of the car in terms of performance, and traction, though PPM managing director Jonathan Diuguid was keen to point out that gains have been made across the board.

The Porsche wasn’t refuelled properly — or perhaps not at all — after its pre-grid reconnaissance laps. That explains why Vanthoor pitted after only 32 laps even with a short safety car after the start, whereas the Toyotas went 38 and 40 respectively

“We’ve made steps on mechanical set-up and with the software, but also on understanding the tyre,” he said. “That was a big part of our performance today, especially in the first two stints.”

Porsche went for the medium-compound Michelin slick all around in race day temperatures that far exceeded those seen during practice and qualifying. Toyota started with mediums on the right and hards on the left, while Ferrari went for a Michelin hard on each corner with both its 499P LMHs.

Toyota quickly switched to four mediums, which, said Diuguid, proved that Porsche had got it right. But, he added, “once everyone else figured it out, we saw the true pace of the cars”. And by that he meant a Toyota GR010 still had an edge over everyone else, Porsche included.

But that advantage over the Porsche, at least in the first two-thirds of the race, wasn’t enough for a GR010 to blast past a 963 at will. That much was clear when Lopez caught Estre during the second half of their mid-race doubles. The Argentinian was right with the Frenchman straight after taking on two fresh mediums on the hard-used left-hand side of the car but wasn’t able to pass. Or rather not able to make it stick: he did have his nose in front a couple of times.

Once clear of the Ferraris, Toyota had the edge on pace but couldn't immediately translate that into a pass

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

These travails for Lopez allowed Hirakawa to close down a deficit to his team-mate that had stood at as much as 15s, Toyota choosing to swap the positions of its two cars to allow the Japanese driver a crack at the leader. He only needed three laps before diving cleanly down the inside into the Turn 10 right-hander at the start of the twiddly final sector on what was admittedly Estre’s in-lap.

The #7 Toyota subsequently jumped the Porsche during the pitstop cycle. Porsche’s victory bid — and it should be described as that — was over, though Lotterer remained in sniffing distance of the second Toyota at least for the first half of his double. He crossed the line only 8.6s in arrears of Hartley, who had quickly dropped behind a flying Kobayashi after the final driver changes.

That relatively slender margin between the second and third-placed cars led Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon to argue post-race that the Porsche could have split his cars but for what has to be described as an unusual problem.

The Porsche wasn’t refuelled properly — or perhaps not at all — after its pre-grid reconnaissance laps. That explains why Vanthoor pitted after only 32 laps even with a short safety car after the start, whereas the Toyotas went 38 and 40 respectively. Vanthoor had to go into fuel-save mode to ensure that the car wouldn’t have to stop for a late splash of fuel.

“Our baseline is 37 laps, 38 with some saving, 39 with lots of saving,” said Vasselon. “Forty, wow! Without that mistake, they would have been between #7 and #8.”

It is a testament to Vanthoor, who was again the stand-out driver in the PPM line-up at Fuji, that the 16s advantage he enjoyed when the Toyotas made their stops was only down to 11s when he completed his 40-lap run over the second half of his double. Porsche wasn’t so sure that it could have finished any higher than third.

“I don’t think it had a huge impact on the race result,” said Diuguid, words echoed by Vanthoor.

What is indisputable, however, is that Vanthoor and Co didn’t have the pace to beat the #7 car. Kobayashi was on fire last weekend. He took pole by six tenths from Hartley and closed down a four-second deficit to his team-mate after the final driver changes in a flash. After passing the New Zealander, he left him for dead over the final two hours, racing away into a lead that stood at 39s at the chequered flag.

With Kobayashi aboard, the #7 Toyota had the edge on Hartley with the damaged #8 machine

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

What Vasselon called “the special Kamui effect” on a track he knows well again came into play. That local knowledge played its part at the end of the race.

“It’s a track that is quite technically challenging,” said Vasselon of the 2.84-mile Fuji Speedway. “We see that the guys that are used to driving it have something on top of the others.”

But Hartley was also struggling with a balance problem that had afflicted #8 all weekend. It was almost certainly exacerbated in the latter stages of the race by bodywork damage picked up at the start when Buemi was tagged by Ferrari driver Miguel Molina in the chaos at the start.

“The damaged bodywork at the rear was somehow degrading over the race,” explained Vasselon.

"The pace of the car was amazing given that we’ve done no testing. I think P4 was up for grabs today" Harry Tincknell

Ferrari took fourth and fifth, one lap behind the Toyotas, Molina, Nicklas Nielsen and Antonio Fuoco leading home Le Mans winners James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi. But on another day they might have not even made the top six. The other three Porsche 963s in the race all might have beaten them but for a variety of issues.

The second PPM entry lost time at the start after Michael Christensen sustained a right-rear puncture and a penalty for working on the car when the pits were closed following contact with Calado. The car, shared with Dane Cameron and Frederic Makowiecki, made it back into the top 10 before a power steering issue forced a long stop. It only returned to the track after a pump change to give it a kind of shakedown before going on the boat to Bahrain.

The two customer cars entered by the Jota and the Proton squads offered further encouragement for the Stuttgart marque. Both teams left Japan believing that they could and perhaps even should have finished fourth ahead of the Ferraris.

Jota’s Porsche driven by Antonio Felix da Costa, Will Stevens and Yifei Ye ended up sixth. It was delayed by a drive-through for avoidable contact after the first-named came together with Jota’s LMP2 ORECA-Gibson 07 driven by David Heinemeier Hansson and lost time in the only Full Course Yellow virtual safety car in the final hour. Ye had been only 10s behind Pier Guidi at the time but ended up nearly twice that amount in arrears at the finish.

Ferrari wasn't truly in the fight and could have been beaten by Porsche customer teams without their issues

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The Proton car was running ahead of Jota — Harry Tincknell had passed da Costa on track — when it came in for its first driver change. The seat belt pulled through the buckle after Gianmaria Bruni got in, resulting in the loss of 12 or so minutes over the next two stops. Ninth place was a major disappointment for a driver line-up completed by Neel Jani.

“The pace of the car was amazing given that we’ve done no testing,” said Tincknell. “I think P4 was up for grabs today.”

Peugeot made no such claims after a disappointing day for its pair of 9X8 LMHs, which came home seventh and eighth. There was no repeat of the form that yielded a first podium for the avant-garde contender at Monza on a track that clearly didn’t suit the car.

The 9X8 has always struggled with traction, the result at least in part of its concept. It runs the same size wheels and tyres all around rather than the wider rears of all the other Hypercar designs. A reduction in the deployment speed of the front axle hybrid system for the car - down from 150 to 135km/h (85mph) — to try to compensate for that under the Balance of Performance had little or no effect given how slow the final sequence of corners at the Fuji ‘Tilkedrome’.

“As soon as you need to stop and go, you have no traction,” said Mikkel Jensen. “The corners are too slow; you are down to 80km/h, so you already suffer. I don’t think it makes any difference when the front engages.”

The best of the Peugeots in seventh, the #94 entry shared by Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes and stand-in Stoffel Vandoorne, had a clear edge over the second car that the team didn’t fully understand. Jensen, Paul di Resta and Jean-Eric Vergne were two laps behind after the Scot was punted into a spin by Iron Lynx Porsche GTE Am driver Alessio Picariello and then a precautionary pitstop to check if there was any clutch damage as a result.

Cadillac had a race to forget despite making a massive improvement between practice and qualifying to take fifth on the grid with Alex Lynn. The Brit was fifth in the Ganassi-run factory V-Series.R at the first round of pitstops but haemorrhaged time when the team opted to leave him on the four same medium-compound Michelins. The car he shared with Richard Westbrook and Earl Bamber lost any chance of a decent result when a front wheel came off straight after calling into the pits.

Cadillac had an edge over fellow LMDh runner Porsche prior to Fuji. The balance has now shifted, and it is the German manufacturer that looks most likely to topple the LMHs right now.

“We feel like we are in the fight now,” said Diuguid after the race. “There will be other opportunities to challenge.”

Can Porsche threaten once again in Bahrain?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images