Nakajima and Toyota claim home win at Fuji

Kazuki Nakajima took the chequered flag to claim a home victory for himself and Toyota at Fuji Speedway in the latest round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, narrowly defeating rivals Audi by just 11 seconds in the six-hour race.

On his first appearance in the TS030 Hybrid since the Le Mans 24 Hours, Nakajima qualified the car he shared with Alex Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre on pole position. Benoit Treluyer was just 0.140 seconds adrift in the #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro.

The two cars continued to be closely matched during the race. Wurz opened up an early lead as the Audis squabbled and Allan McNish in the #2 took second from the #1 of Andre Lotterer, although the latter soon grabbed the place back.

Treluyer would then take the lead at the end of the second hour when Lapierre tangled with the GTE Pro Felbermayr-Proton Porsche of Richard Lietz. Lapierre recovered first place through the next set of stops, and was later given some breathing space when Treluyer collided with the Aston Martin of Stefan Mucke. As well as needing repairs in the pits, the car had to serve a stop-go penalty for causing the coming together. That dropped it to third behind the sister #2 Audi.

The incident meant that Toyota could afford a late splash-and-dash and still beat the recovering #1 car, claiming its second WEC victory and bouncing back after defeat to the German marque in Bahrain.

McNish and co-driver Tom Kristensen were largely off the pace all weekend and had to settle for third at the finish, falling further behind the trio of Treluyer, Lotterer and Marcel Fassler at the head of the drivers’ standings.

Rebellion Racing were the best of the rest in fourth with drivers Neel Jani and Nicolas Prost sealing the LMP1 Trophy for privateer teams. JRM’s HPD was fifth in the race ahead of the similar machine of Strakka Racing.

In LMP2, Starworks Motorsport wrapped up the title with a race to spare, although on the day they had to settle for second best in class to the ADR-Delta machine, which had local star Shinji Nakano behind the wheel alongside regulars John Martin and Tor Graves.

Lietz and Marc Lieb survived the contact with the Toyota to take victory in GTE Pro and end the four-race winning streak of AF Corse and Ferrari, while the #50 Larbre Corvette of Pedro Lamy, Patrick Bornhauser and Julien Canal were victorious in GTE Am.

Shanghai hosts the final round of the 2012 season on 28 October.

Watch LIVE World Endurance Championship coverage on Motors TV


Peter Allen