Toyota's Fuel-Only Gamble Steals the Fuji WEC Win and the Points Lead
Toyota skipped the tire change under the final safety car, took track position from Alpine, and held on in the rain to put the #8 crew atop the standings.
Toyota won the 6 Hours of Fuji on Sunday without having the fastest car. A fuel-only stop under the final safety car moved the #8 TR010 Hybrid from sixth to the lead, and Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, and Ryō Hirakawa now top the World Endurance Championship drivers' standings with two rounds left.
It's Toyota's first win at its home track since 2023. Alpine, last year's Fuji winner, had looked like the team to beat after Saturday's rain-soaked qualifying was scrapped and the grid was set on practice times, handing it a front-row lockout. Genesis, which arrived at Fuji chasing a breakthrough result, started third and fifth. The #8 Toyota lined up eighth.
The call that won it
The #8 had worked its way into the top six by half-distance, but early in the fifth hour Hartley was tipped into a spin at Turn 1 by the #007 Aston Martin. Hirakawa took over in sixth at the next round of stops.
With 55 minutes left, the safety car came out and the Turn 1 barrier needed repairs. Toyota's engineers bet the neutralization would run long, so they topped up the fuel and left the tires alone. Buemi told WEC TV the car left the pits without enough fuel to finish had the race gone green immediately, according to RACER. The repairs dragged on, the gamble paid off, and Hirakawa led at the restart with 20 minutes to go.
Rain returned for the sprint to the flag. Victor Martins, on fresher left-side tires in the #36 Alpine, closed in, but Hirakawa held on to win by 0.591 seconds. The #15 BMW finished third, the #35 Alpine fourth.
Buemi called it "one of our best wins in a long time," noting that nobody in the team expected it heading into the final hour.
A messy day for the #7
The sister car of Le Mans winners Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Nyck de Vries started 13th and never had a clean run. De Vries picked up a puncture in the first half hour, then spun after contact with the #35 Alpine. After the same round of stops that put Hirakawa in the car, Kobayashi, who also serves as team principal, was running seventh when a drive-through penalty for speeding under a full-course yellow dropped the car to 12th. The #7 recovered to eighth.
That leaves the #7 crew second in the drivers' standings, 10 points behind their teammates. In the manufacturers' table, Toyota now leads by 23 points. The team says it was its 10th win at Fuji, in front of a weekend crowd of 72,326.
What's next
The series returns to Europe for the first 6 Hours of Barcelona on October 18 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the penultimate round. Genesis, which scored its best WEC finish at COTA earlier this month, will be looking to build on its Fuji grid pace there. Full provisional results are on the FIA WEC website.
