Toyota's fifth-fastest car wins at Fuji and takes the WEC lead
Toyota short-filled its TR010 to steal a Fuji race Alpine had controlled
Toyota's No. 8 TR010 Hybrid wins the 6 Hours of Fuji by 0.591 seconds, and it does so without the pace to win. Alpine locked out the front row and ran first and second for most of Sunday's race. One pit call under the last safety car put Ryo Hirakawa in front, and he held off Victor Martins' faster Alpine A424 through the final laps.
Toyota filled the No. 8 TR010 to 72 percent under the last safety car
Toyota filled the No. 8 car to only 72 percent of its virtual energy allocation and left the old tyres on during the final caution. Finn Gehrsitz's Garage 59 McLaren had hit the barrier with 58 minutes left, and the neutralisation ran for nearly half an hour. Buemi said the team judged the repair would take a long time; had the race restarted at once, the car would not have reached the flag. It jumped from sixth to first.
Alpine's A424 was the fastest car at Fuji and finished 0.591 seconds short
Alpine pitted both A424s together and fitted two fresh tyres to each, and the leading No. 36 fell to fifth. Martins then passed the No. 009 Aston Martin Valkyrie, the sister Alpine and Belgian Dries Vanthoor's third-placed BMW, and closed a 2.6-second gap to the Toyota. Sporting director Nicolas Lapierre admitted Alpine could have won by sacrificing one car, and chose not to. Buemi, for his part, put the No. 8 fifth on average pace.
Alpine's 30-point Fuji weekend arrives with its Hypercar programme up for sale
Alpine scores 30 points at Fuji, its best haul of the season, a year after the same track gave the A424 its first Hypercar win. Renault is leaving the class at the end of 2026, and Geely is weighing a takeover of the Signatech-run programme, with a decision expected after this race. Alpine also raced here with two-driver crews after dropping António Félix da Costa and Frédéric Makowiecki.
The No. 8 Toyota leads the WEC drivers' standings by 10 points
Hirakawa, Buemi and Hartley now lead the No. 7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries by ten points. The No. 7 finished eighth after a drive-through for speeding under caution. Before Fuji it was tied at the top with the No. 20 BMW, both crews having scored nothing in Austin. That BMW of René Rast, Dutchman Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde came home 13th after two punctures and now sits 14 points back.
Barcelona and Monza leave 52 points for the WEC title
Two rounds remain: the 6 Hours of Barcelona on 16 to 18 October and the 6 Hours of Monza on 6 to 8 November. Each pays 25 points for the win plus one for pole, so 52 points are still available to any crew. Toyota goes into them without Bahrain, the track where it traditionally sealed titles, and with its first home win since 2023, having won nine of the first ten Fuji races from 2012.
AutoNext Take
Toyota won Fuji on judgement, not luck, and that deserves more credit than the margin suggests. Reading a crumpled barrier as thirty minutes of caution and fuelling to 72 percent is the kind of call that only works with a car that is reliable to the last drop, and after Austin's hydraulic failure the TR010 now is. Alpine made a generous, defensible choice for its team, and it cost the No. 36 crew seven points, the gap between second place and a win.
Toyota will leave Monza on 8 November with the drivers' title for the No. 8 crew and the manufacturers' title as well. The TR010 is not the quickest car in Barcelona or Monza either, yet a ten-point lead, two healthy cars and a pit wall that now reads races better than its rivals make it the team to beat in both.
