WEC: Alpine team won the "6 Hours of Fuji"

      The Alpine factory team, competing in the World Endurance Championship, took victory by winning the “6 Hours of Fuji” marathon.

      It is their first success since July 2022, when an Alpine crew won the 6-hour race at Monza, but at that time the team was still using the old A480 prototypes with naturally aspirated Gibson engines.

      So the first win of the hybrid Alpine A424 hypercar can quite reasonably be considered a historic achievement. Of course, one of the first to congratulate them via social media were colleagues from Alpine F1, the Renault works team competing in Formula 1.

      The prototype car carrying number 35 was driven by Ferdinand Habsburg, Paul-Loup Chatin and Charles Milesi — Milesi was the first to cross the finish line, 7.682 seconds ahead of Jean-Éric Vergne in another French prototype, the Peugeot 9X8. That Peugeot crew, alongside Vergne, includes another ex-Formula 1 driver, Paul di Resta, and Mikkel Jensen.

      In the early stages of the race the pace was set by the Cadillac that started from pole, and the American hypercar crew managed to build a noticeable gap to the field, but then, after a serious crash involving works BMW driver Raffaele Marciello, the on-track battle was neutralized with the introduction of a Virtual Safety Car (VSC). Fortunately the Italian driver was uninjured.

      At that time the first wave of pit stops was taking place, and as a result the order changed: leading was the Porsche hypercar number 99 of Proton Competition, which was pursuing Vergne in the Peugeot and overtook him in Turn 10. These events occurred with less than three hours remaining.

      The Peugeot and the Alpine (No. 35) were the last to make their scheduled pit stop before yellow flags reappeared on track: two Aston Martins collided — the Valkyrie hypercar number 007, driven by Tom Gamble, and the Vantage GT3 driven by Zak Robichon.

      That late pit stop, and Alpine’s decision to change only the rear tyres on Milesi’s car during its final visit to the pits rather than all four wheels, allowed the French driver to take the lead. The endurance regulations allow this, which saves time in the pits.

      Alongside the Alpine and Peugeot crews on the podium at the “6 Hours of Fuji” were Porsche drivers Kevin Estre and Laurent Vanthoor, who also sit third in the World Championship drivers’ standings. Third place at the Japanese round allowed them to significantly cut the gap to the AF Corse Italian crew in the championship.

      This time the trio of Robert Kubica, Phil Hanson and Yifei Ye finished only tenth, but interestingly that No. 83 crew was still the best of the three running Ferrari 499P hypercars.

      Both factory Ferraris were outside the top ten overall — such was the misfortune of their race today. Penalties received by the Ferrari drivers also affected their results.

      In the LMGT3 category victory went to the British TF Sport crew of Tom van Romp, Rui Andrade and Charlie Eastwood, competing in a Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Strictly speaking, that car crossed the line second in its class on track, but the leading Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 crew received a penalty for a rules breach on their final pit stop and was demoted to second.

      However, the GT3 results may still be revised, as the stewards are investigating Eastwood for a collision in the final minutes of the race with car No. 31 — the BMW M4 GT3 Evo No. 31 of Team WRT.

      That crew, consisting of Brazilian Augusto Farfus, Australian Yasser Shahin and, notably, Russian driver Timur Boguslavsky, climbed to the third step of the podium, matching their best result of the season.

      In any case, the somewhat unexpected outcomes of the Japanese round have only intensified the situation in both championship standings, so the final order will be determined only at the season finale, which will take place on 8 November in Bahrain.