Winning margins are usually pretty large in endurance racing, with the victors often taking the chequered flag minutes, sometimes laps ahead of second place. So today’s 6 Hours of Fuji was particularly nuts as the race for overall victory went down to the final lap.
Perhaps even more significant was the fact it was Toyota leading the race in the final minutes, hoping to score victory at home to make up for their heartbreaking end to the 24 Hours of Le Mans earlier this year.
Ex-F1 favourite Kamui Kobayashi looked to have done enough for Toyota, with a five second gap to Loic Duval’s Audi on the penultimate lap but after losing a chunk of time in traffic, the poor Toyota team (haven’t they been through enough already?!) had to witness a nail-biting final lap as the gap had been closed down to under two seconds.
One extra lap and the story could have been so very different but Kobayashi held on to take the win by just 1.439 seconds after six hours of impossibly close racing!
Things were equally as mad down the field too as the LMP2 class was decided by just 1.398 seconds as WTF1 legend Will Stevens passed Bruno Senna in the final minutes to take a class victory for G-Drive.