Maiden win for Alpine in 100th race. WEC down to wire.
Charles Milesi, Paul-Loup Chatin and Ferdinand Habsburg delivered an epic drive to hand Alpine its maiden World Endurance Championship victory at a chaotic centennial round Fuji 6 Hour on Sunday. It was a good day for the French as Mikkel Jensen, Paul di Resta and Jean-Eric Vergne delivered Peugeot’s best WEC result yet in second.
Jensen held the Porsches off for second, which was enough to keep the 2025 title race open on a shocking day for leaders Ferrari. An equally dramatic LMGT3 race saw Charlie Eastwood, Rui Andrade and Tom van Rompuy’s TF Sport Corvette grab a last gasp victory when they closed within five seconds after first car home, Alessio Rovera, Simon Mann and Francois Heriau’s AF Ferrari 296 picked up that much of a penalty.
Alpine won on a tyre gamble
The winning Alpine came back from an early penalty after Habsburg nudged the 8 Gazoo Toyota and later had to change its nose. But it bounced back what Chatin made an opportune pitstop seconds before a second yellow period and then safety car period to jump top second behind the Peugeot before the Porsche found a way past.
Alpine would however win the race on a tyre gamble when the team only fitted two new tyres rather than the four that Peugeot and Porsche, ahead took. That allowed Milesi to snatch the lead and leave the Peugeot to fight the Porsche off for second as the race interrupted by three safety cars and five full course yellows, came to an end.
The second Jaminet Andlauer Penske Porsche took fourth to complete a strong points haul as leaders Ferrari struggled, to keep both the manufacturer and drivers’ titles open heading into November’s Bahrain finale. Behind them, Stoffel Vandoorne, Loic Duval and Malthe Jakobsen closed off a great day for Peugeot with fifth in the second car.
Peugeot, Aston Martin’s best-ever finish
Marco Sorensen and Alex Riberas delivered Aston Martin’s best-ever finish in sixth after the second car crashed out following a strong run. Alex Lynn, Will Stevens and Norman Nato could only salvage seventh for Cadillac, which dominated qualifying to deliver the team’s third front row lockout of the season before leading comfortably early on.
Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway were eighth in the best of the Toyotas
ahead of Robin Frijns, Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde in the surviving BMW after the sister car crashed. Second in the Drivers chase, Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson’s privateer yellow AF Ferrari was tenth on a disastrous day for the factory team.
The 51 Ferrari struggled home 11th to score a single point while the title-leading Fuoco Molina Nielsen 50 car clashed with the Proton Porsche and suffered two track limit penalties to plummet to fifteenth. They were behind the Jani Pino Varrone Proton Porsche, which led at a point, the Bamber Bourdais Button Cadillac and the Gounon Makowiecki Schumacher Alpine, and ahead of last Hypercar finisher, the 8 Toyota.
Corvette tops dramatic LMGT3
All of that means Ferrari takes a 39-point advantage to the Bahrain finale over Porsche with Cadillac a further 24 adrift. So with 65 points on the table for a 1-2, Porsche will have to do better than third and fourth and Ferrari worse than it fared in Fuji, to win. Because the same result as Fuji would see the two tie, and Ferrari take it on a count-back of wins! Hanson, Kubica and Yifei have already claimed the WEC Teams Cup.
Ferrari crews factory men Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado lead the Le Mans winning yellow car’s privateer crew of Philip Hanson, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye by a point less, at a 14 deficit. Reigning Porsche world champions Kévin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor are a further seven adrift and Cadillac trio Alex Lynn, Norman Nato and Will Stevens still in with a chance at 36 adrift with 38 points available.
Behind the dramatic LMGT3 Corvette-Ferrari 1-2, the Shahin Boguslavskiy Farfus and Al Harthy Rossi van der Linde BMWs emerged third and fourth from a wild late race round of pitstops and ahead of the log leading Hardwick Pera Lietz Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche, the Flohr Castellacci Rigon Ferrari and James Robichon Drudi Aston Martin.
That leaves Manthey trio Hardwick, Pera and Lietz eleven points clear of the Rovera Mann Francois Heriau AF Ferrari and TF Corvette duo, Fuji winners 81 Rompuy, Andrade and Eastwood and teammates Keating, Edgar and Juncadella in with outside chances of stealing the WEC LMGT3 title. It all goes down over eight hours at Bahrain on 8 November.