6 Hours of Fuji

Toyota remained on top in the second practice for this weekend’s 6 Hours of Fuji round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. On Friday afternoon, the top two spots were once again held by the Japanese manufacturer, with Kamui Kobayashi setting the fastest time in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid. Kobayashi started the practice with what turned out to be the benchmark time of 1m29.948s, clocking in more than a second faster than Sebastien Buemi had done in the sister #8 Toyota earlier in the day. The #8 car, which is Toyota’s better-placed vehicle in the drivers’ standings, was Kobayashi’s main rival in the hands of Brendon Hartley as it was 0.225s off the benchmark time. Loic Duval’s handling of the #94 car, one of Peugeot’s two new 9X8 Le Mans Hypercars, put it in third place overall. His best performance of 1m31.194s was three tenths faster than either Peugeot had set in FP1, but it still put the French manufacturer 1.246 seconds behind the leader. Nicolas Lapierre’s Alpine A480 grandfathered LMP1 vehicle, which now leads the points standings, was fourth fastest and 1.414 seconds slower than the leaders with the #93 Peugeot driven by Jean-Eric Vergne following in fifth place. The LMP2 division was dominated by JOTA’s pair of Oreca 07s, with Antonio Felix da Costa’s early time of 1m32.351s putting the #38 car in first place. The second-placed sister #28 car in the hands of Ed Jones followed just 0.142 seconds behind as the fastest United Autosports Oreca, driven by Filipe Albuquerque finished third. The Pro/Am AF Corse Oreca was the fourth-fastest in the hands of Nicklas Nielsen as Robin Frijns’ WRT Oreca finished fifth. Ferrari continued to dominate GTE Pro as the #51 488 GTE Evo once again topped the timesheets. In the last few seconds of the session, Gianmaria Bruni recorded the fastest time in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR-19, which Alessandro Pier Guidi beat by 0.164 seconds with his best time of 1m37.682s. Kevin Estre’s #92 Porsche finished in third place, 0.769s off the lead, and was followed by Miguel Molina’s #52 Ferrari and Tommy Milner’s sole Corvette C8.R. Michelle Gatting, driving an Iron Dames Ferrari, finished first in GTE Am with a timing of 1m39.170s, which was 0.015s faster than both the TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage GTE driven by Marco Sorensen and the sister Iron Lynx Ferrari driven by former Formula 1 racer Giancarlo Fisichella which tied of lap times.

Toyota took the top two spots in the opening free practice session on home soil at Fuji for this weekend’s penultimate edition of the FIA World Endurance Championship.