Toyota dominates on home soil and claims Fuji 1-2
Toyota secured another dominant World Endurance Championship victory at Fuji, with Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez taking their first win of the 2018/19 superseason.
After losing pole for exceeding the pitlane speed limit in qualifying, the #7 crew responded in emphatic fashion with an 11-second win over the sister #8 TS050 HYBRID of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso.
The two Toyotas were once again in a league of their own, with the best of the non-hybrid LMP1S – the #1 Rebellion R-13 shared by Andre Lotterer, Neel Jani and Bruno Senna – ending up four laps down in third.
Despite losing out on victory at Fuji, Alonso, Buemi and Nakajima extended their points lead to 13 and Toyota have already begun talks to keep Alonso in its line-up beyond the 2018/19 superseason.
An announcement is unlikely until spring 2019 at the earliest.
The LMP2 class was again dominated by Jackie Chan DC Racing, as the all-malaysian #37 crew of Jazeman Jaafar, Weiron Tan and Nabil Jeffri came through for their first class win of the season.
Porsche took an unlikely win in the GTE Pro class, with Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen extending their points advantage, but only after the leading the #71 AF Corse Ferrari of Sam Bird and Davide Rigon suffered a puncture in the penultimate hour.
Porsche made it a clean sweep of wins in GTE as Project 1 claimed its first-ever Am class WEC win with Jorg Bergmeister, Egidio Perfetti and Patrick Lindsey.