Photo: Javier Jimenez/DPPI

Ferdinand Habsburg, Paul-Loup Chatin and Charles Milesi broke through to deliver a landmark FIA World Endurance Championship victory for Alpine in a tightly contested 6 Hours of Fuji.

Milesi brought the No. 35 Alpine A424 across the line with a margin of 7.682 seconds over the No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 of Jean-Eric Vergne, Mikkel Jensen and Paul di Resta.

Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA controlled the early stages of the race after locking out the front row in qualifying with its pair of V-Series.Rs, with the No. 12 car building up a healthy margin at the front of the field.

However, the race was turned on its head by a second-hour intervention, triggered when BMW driver Raffaele Marciello suffered a high-speed off between Turns 8 and 9 and made heavy contact with the guardrail.

The incident occurred as Marciello ran behind the No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche 963 of Nico Pino. Marciello was unhurt in the crash.

When the virtual safety car came out as a result of the incident in the middle of a pit cycle, it shuffled the order with Nico Varrone, now at the wheel of the No. 99 Porsche, emerging in the lead ahead of Vergne’s Peugeot.

Vergne then muscled his way past Varrone with a robust pass at Turn 10 to take the lead with just under three hours remaining.

Both the No. 93 Peugeot and No. 35 Alpine were then the last cars to pit prior to the declaration of a Full Course Yellow when Tom Gamble’s No. 007 Aston Martin Valkyrie collided with the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Zach Robichon at Turn 3.

With the No. 6 Porsche 963 of Kevin Estre also fighting its way into contention, the battle for overall honors became a three-way fight.

Porsche Penske’s No. 6 car then suffered a setback due to a five-second penalty for a pitstop infringement, while a call to only take two tires at the final pitstop allowed Milesi to leapfrog Jensen and take the race lead.

The Frenchman subsequently stormed away as Jensen came under pressure from Vanthoor, which allowed Alpine to claim its first overall WEC victory since the 2022 6 Hours of Monza.

The ORECA-chassised A424, meanwhile, triumphed for the first time in the world championship.

Vanthoor and Estre completed the overall podium, gaining significant ground in the drivers’ championship as the No. 51 Ferrari 499P failed to score points.

As a result, the gap between the two cars going into the Bahrain season finale has been reduced to 21 points.

Julien Andlauer and Mathieu Jaminet finished fourth aboard the No. 5 Porsche, ahead of the No. 94 Peugeot of Malthe Jakobsen, Stoffel Vandoorne and Loic Duval.

Aston Martin’s sole remaining Valkyrie, driven by Marco Sorensen and Alex Riberas, came home in sixth, bouncing back from an early drive-through penalty to secure the car’s best finish in WEC to date.

The polesitting No. 12 Cadillac, piloted by Will Stevens, Norman Nato and Alex Lynn, finished seventh, unable to fight its way back to the front after the hour two shakeup.

The No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Nyck de Vries, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi took eighth despite Kobayashi having a late brush with Sorensen’s No. 009 Aston Martin.

The overall top ten was completed by the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P and No. 20 BMW.

Notably, the two factory-entered Ferrari both finished the race outside the top ten, with the No. 51 car in particular having a messy race that included two separate penalties for repeated track limit infringements.

Another notable penalty was handed out to the No. 8 Toyota, which was ordered to serve a three-minute stop and go penalty that condemned the car to a fruitless run to last in the Hypercar class.

That penalty was given as the car incorrectly completed the procedure for an emergency stop under Full Course Yellow.

WEC’s sporting regulations state that the car was required to a complete regular stop as soon as the pits reopened, which it did not do after it came in with a puncture after a hit from the race-winning No. 35 Alpine early on.

TF Sport Victorious in LMGT3 After Final Lap Drama, AF Corse Penalty

In the LMGT3 category, Tom van Rompuy, Rui Andrade and Charlie Eastwood came out on top after a dramatic final lap that saw the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 hit with a late-race penalty.

Francois Heriau, Simon Mann and Alessio Rovera appeared on course for their second victory of the season after Rovera rejoined in the class lead following a fuel stop in the closing minutes.

However, the No. 21 car then received a five-second penalty for a pitstop infringement that brought it under threat from TF’s No. 81 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

While Rovera initially appeared to have a sufficient margin in hand, the silver Ferrari then slowed dramatically on the final lap, crossing the line just two seconds clear of the chasing Eastwood.

As a result, the No. 81 Corvette was declared the winner with the penalty applied, resulting in a second LMGT3 victory for the Tom Ferrier-led squad after the No. 33 sister car triumphed in the Qatar season opener.

The No. 81 crew does have a potential Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, as Eastwood remains under investigation for a Turn 13 clash with Augusto Farfus in the final ten minutes of the race.

Farfus, Yasser Shahin and Timur Boguslavskiy completed the class podium with their No. 31 The Bend Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO, with the sister No. 46 car of Ahmad Al Harthy, Valentino Rossi and Kelvin van der Linde coming home in fourth.

Van der Linde came out on top in a fierce late-race battle with the No. 92 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R of Richard Lietz, with the Austrian rounding out the top-five in class in the car he shared with Ryan Hardwick and Riccardo Pera.

RESULTS: 6 Hours of Fuji

Davey Euwema is Sportscar365’s European Editor. Based in The Netherlands, Euwema covers the FIA World Endurance Championship, European Le Mans Series and Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS, among other series.