Six hours of Fuji Speedway is the latest FIA World Endurance Championship offering this weekend as the Hypercar and LMP3 based series moves onto Japan for its sixth round of the season.
Last time out at the Circuit of The Americas was just three weeks ago where the #007 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie secured its best qualifying position of its racing life so far in fourth whilst the team’s two Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s locked out the front row in class for the first time ever.
Six hours later and through some very trying track conditions later, the #007 car of harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble converted that starting position into a P4 overall finishing result whilst the two Vantage crews did eventually swap positions upon track for the #27 car of Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Matia Drudi to claim their first race win of the season but with their sister #23 car of Gray Newell, Eduardo Barrichello and Jonny Adam doing enough to secure the final step of the LMGT3 podium for an historic home 1-3 result for the American based team.
The results from the USA lift the #007 crew up to eleventh within the Hypercar Drivers Championship, very much still in contention with even the class leaders above with three rounds still outstanding whilst within LMGT3, that result kickstarts again the #27 crews championship assault after something of a slow start to now lie nineth whilst the #23 crew are now placed just five points above them in sixth – seventeen points behind the class leading driver.
Past season results from Fuji Speedway have been difficult from any Aston Martin Racing powered crew and you have to go back to 2022 for when the locally based #777 D’Station Racing AMR Vantage GTE crew of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg for their last podium finish within the then Am class.
Last year’s race was (like all the rest) the first for the new Aston Martin Valkyrie car and it was the #009 car of Alex Riberas and Marco Sorensen who faired best within that race with their P5 finish overall after the sister #007 was spun out after contact.
As usual, all bar tyre pressures and camber information remains confidential to the teams going into the Fuji round so we won’t know of any changes in car performance within either platform until teams get on track for the first Free Practice session later just before lunchtime on Friday and maybe then not until the actual race which gets waved off at 11:00hrs local on Sunday.
Photo credits – Team / DPPI
