BMW emerged atop the FIA World Endurance Championship standings as the chequered flag fell on Free Practice 2 of the 6 Hours of Fuji, the seventh event of the 2024 season.
In the 90 minutes available in the Japanese afternoon there were no particular interruptions, except for a short Full Course Yellow test dictated by the Race Direction to check the systems, with teams and drivers who, as always, dedicated themselves to their respective set-up work, checking consumption and degradation of the medium and hard compound tyres on different strategies and fuel loads.
In the HYPERCAR class we find Dries Vanthoor dictating the pace in 1’29″577 at the wheel of the #15 M Hybrid V8 managed by Team WRT, beating the #5 Porsche and the Cadillac by a matter of thousandths, 0″009 and 0″015 behind respectively.
The best of the Ferraris was the #83 of AF Corse which finished fourth at 0″327 from the top, but very close to the yellow 499P were the #8 Toyota, the #20 BMW and the #51 Ferrari, also within 3 tenths of a second of the leader.
The standings are quite close, with the #38 Porsche-Jota and the #7 Toyota finishing in eighth and ninth place, followed by the #6 Team Penske Porsche with a margin of half a second.
The two Alpines finished in 11th and 13th position, resulting among those with the most laps under their belt, separated by the Porsche-Jota #12 and keeping the two Peugeots behind, with the Ferrari #50 15th which is 1″ behind. Lamborghini stops 17th at 1″2.
#50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen
Photo by: Andreas Beil
In the LMGT3 class, where this morning new parameters regarding power and energy to be observed for all brands present in the category, except BMW, McLaren and Lexus, the one to stand out was the usual very fast Alessio Rovera at the wheel of the AF Corse Ferrari 296 #55, stopping the clock at 1’40″682.
The Varese driver precedes the #82 Corvette of TF Sport and the #60 Lamborghini of Iron Lynx by a tenth, with the 296 #54 fourth at 0″242 from its sister car.
Here too the ranking is very close with 17 cars within 1″. The Lexus #87 of Akkodis ASP did well to finish in the Top 5, leaving behind the McLarens of United Autosports and its twin #78, while the Ford #88 of Proton Competition is ninth with a half a second gap and closely followed by the Aston Martins of Heart Of Racing #27 and D’Station Racing #777.
Among the BMWs, the best is still the #46, 14th at the hands of Valentino Rossi, the Porsches finish in 12th and 16th position with the #91 of Manthey EMA faster than the #92 of Manthey PureRxcing.
On Saturday, the program includes Free Practice 3 at 10.20am local time (3.20am in Italy) and Qualifying starting at 2.20pm (7.20pm).
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